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Our knowledge of the conservation status of reptiles, the most diverse class of terrestrial vertebrates, has improved dramatically over the past decade, but still lags behind that of the other tetrapod groups. Here, we conduct the first comprehensive evaluation (~92% of the world's ~1714 described species) of the conservation 1 Joint senior authors. D.G. Chapple et al.

We recorded amphibians and reptiles in two hill ranges, the Cardamom Hills and Ponmudi Hills of the southern Western Ghats, India, for a period of four months each. In all, 74 species, comprising of 28 species of amphibians belonging to 11 genera and 8 families and 46 species of reptiles, belonging to 27 genera and 9 families were recorded. Aspects deviating from literature have been discussed. A comparison of the results of the present study with that of the earlier works from the same region is also provided.Key words: Amphibians, Reptiles, Cardamom hills, Ponmudi hills, Reinvestigation, Herpetology IntroductionThe Western Ghats is one of the global biodiversity hotspots (Myers et al., 2000) and its herpetofauna has been investigated by several authors (Ferguson, 1895(Ferguson, , 1904Hutton, 1949;Hutton & David, 2009;Inger et al., 1984;Ishwar et al., 2001;Kumar et al., 2001;Malhotra & Davis, 1991;Vasudevan et al., 2001;Wall, 1919Wall, , 1920. These reports have provided details about diversity, distribution patterns and ecology of this community in these hill ranges. Since most of these works are decades old, we take the opportunity of presenting our recent investigations' results with photographic vouchers along with basic taxonomic and ecological data.

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A descriptive study was conducted among 75 members of five Village Water and Sanitation Committees (VWSCs) and 15 local residents in Tamil Nadu, India to assess committee's formation and decision making process. There were 64% females and rest were males, all aged between 20 years and 45 years. A total of 50.7% of them passed 12 th standard and 29.3% belonged to self-help groups. Although, all of them were aware about presence of guidelines, none of them knew its contents. About 20% opined that meetings were not being conducted regularly. All members said that they had problems in attending meeting regularly, take decisions if at least 10 (67%) members are present and fund was not adequate for 1 year period. One-third of local residents did not know the committee formation process and none of them aware about guidelines. Formation and decision making process of VWSC should be improved to tackle the sanitation problem.