Indian of Traditional Kn ow ledge Vol. 2( I ). January 2003. pp. 40-50 Indigenous animal health care practices in Indian Central Himalaya: Empirical evidences Prasanna K Samal *, Anubha Shah. Sush i! Tiwari , Bhupe nd er Mehra & Devendra K Agrawal G.B. Pant Institute of Environme nt & Development. Kosi-Katarmal. AI mora 263 643. India Email: pra sa nnasa mal @rediffmail. com Recei l'e d 29 Ap ril 2002: re1 •ised 13 Mav 2002 The Indi an Central Himalaya supports about four milli on li vestock populatio n. which play a vital role in th e li ve lihood of th e nati ves. In this remote ecosystem. where modern veterinary infrastructure is very poor bo th quantitati ve ly and qualitatively. th e loc al s have evol ved indigt:- nous health care practices to maintain th eir li ves tock population. The pract i ces. ba sed on locally available biorcsource s. are ef fec tiv e in hea ling dis ea s es. do not ha ve financial cost and arc easily ad mini strabl e. Through a survey covering eight se ttl ements located w ithin alti llldc ran ging from 900 m to 1800 m in th e reg ion, an effort was made to documelll th e indi ge nous animal health ca re pmctices interviewing 350 knowledgeable rcspondel\ls drawn from both the sexes. Keywords: Indi ge nous animal health care. Li ve stoc k. T radi ti onal kn ow ledge The Indian Ce ntral Himalaya, with a geo- graphi ca l area of 53,485 sq km, forms a part of W es tern Himalaya which is rec- og ni sed as a sub-centre of diversity of plant genetic resources. It is identified as one among th e eight spec ially criti ca l ar- eas in the Indian Him al aya, ec ologically'. Despite being eco logically rich and uniqu e, th e reg i on is highly fragile geo- logically and vuln era bl e se ismologically. Human hab itation in the re gion is found up to an altitude of 3500 m asl. The re- gion supports 84, 79,562 persons who constitute about 0.83% and 21.40% of the total population of Indian Republic and * Cor res pondent author I nd ian Himalayan Reg i on (IHR ), respe c- ti ve !/. The decennial growth rate of th e population of the reg ion for th e decade 1991-200 I was 19.20. The populati on den- s ity was I 59 persons/sq km in 200 I . The peo ple of the Indian Central Himalaya li ke el se where in other mountain eco-systems are large ly dependent for their li ving on th eir immediate bioresource s. The reg ion is ex periencing major difficulties tn sus- taining i ts growing population on its over all environmental res ourc es. The human population of th e region is increas ing at an expo nen ti al rate of 1.76 per cent per annum and is doubling in 27-30 years . The reg ion suppor ts about four m illion livestock population according to th e