~ by Aditi Patil

Rapidly growing road networks contribute to a country’s social and economic development, but this contribution comes at a high price that is paid by wildlife. Roads cutting through wild habitat adversely affect animals, with one of the most distinct impacts being Animal-Vehicle Collisions (AVCs). A recent study conducted by researchers at Dr. Bilal Habib's lab at the Wildlife Institute of India examined factors like animal behavior and traffic characteristics that influence AVCs, and how information about these factors can be used to prevent such accidents.

​Increased connectivity through roads is critical for development. However, it increases construction of transport infrastructure, often passing through wild habitat. This poses a risk to wildlife. Animals attempting to cross roads often end up in collisions with vehicles. Notably, there are no natural factors of selection governing AVCs, meaning that these accidents occur entirely by chance. Both healthy and unhealthy individuals in animal populations are equally exposed to the risk. This non selective mortality can negatively affect a population through a loss of healthy individuals. Animals may deliberately begin to avoid crossing roads due to AVCs, thus leading to a barrier to movement. Such barriers will result in isolation of animal populations, and in some cases may even lead to the local extinction of species.

​~ by Prameek Kannan 

The paper explores the legal system of indigenous, forest dependent, tribal communities in Central India, and the multiple factors that influence its production. Forest dependent communities are not only an integral part of their ecosystems, but are a crucial ally for conservation initiatives as well. There have been few studies on the legal systems of indigenous tribes in India; this study looks to understand the same using a post-humanism approach. Posthumanism is a philosophy that considers humans in relation to ecology and technology, as opposed to in isolation, and therefore is an appropriate lens with which to view the environmental entities that influence tribal law in these communities. Here, the author looks to look at the role played by non-human entities in the production of the legal systems of these tribes.

​Two conservation priority landscapes in India - the Western Ghats and Central India remain major strongholds for several endemic and threatened species. However, urbanization and land conversion have resulted in wide-scale habitat fragmentation in both the landscapes. Fragmentation can alter how animals move across a landscape.

Wide-ranging mammals are particularly affected because they travel long distances to forage, breed, and find new territories. ​Identifying where and how have the mammalian movements been impacted at large regional scales will be critical in ensuring habitat connectivity and preventing local extinctions.

A new study published in Biological Conservation evaluated landscape-wide permeability to the movement of five endangered and vulnerable mammals - Asian Elephant, Gaur, Leopard, Sambar, and Sloth Bear in these two priority landscapes. The expansive study area covered 120,000 km2 of the Western Ghats and 729,000 km2 of the Central Indian region. For each of the five study species, the researchers modelled movement in the presence and absence of landscape features such as land-use land-cover, infrastructure and human population. They generated spatially explicit maps identifying areas where animal movement is impeded, reduced, unrestricted, increased, and channeled. These categories can be interpreted as follows – movement is impeded and reduced due to underlying high resistance landscape features, unrestricted due to underlying low resistance areas, finally increased and channeled due to high resistance surrounding landscape features.

~ by Kalyanee Paranjape

As one of the fastest growing economies in the world, India’s topography is undergoing rapid changes. Due to this expansion, ecosystems are under threat due to rapid land use changes and fragmentation. This has led to a growing interest in integrating conservation concerns in infrastructure development in India and an urgent need to illustrate the extent of their fragmentation.

A recent paper titled, “Bits and pieces: Forest fragmentation by linear intrusions in India”, aims to understand the impact of infrastructure developments on forest structural connectivity in India through analyzing forest patch characteristics. The authors have utilized patch size, amount of perforation and inter-patch distance to quantify clusters and fragmentation categories. Cluster analysis was used to identify large, intact patches that need to be preserved in future development action plans. And results were summarized at the national scale and for the existing protected area (PA) network. The results also cover two important conservation landscapes; the Western Ghats and Central India, which are rich in biodiversity and critical for survival of several threatened large mammals including tiger and Asian elephant.

The scientists found an increase in the number of forest patches and a reduction in the number of large patches due to linear infrastructure in India. High tension power-transmission lines and major roads were the most common linear intrusions within forests, and 70 % of the assessed protected areas had some amount of linear infrastructure passing through them. They also discovered that the highest fragmentation due to linear intrusions was observed in Central India, where an intact forest habitat of size 162,000 km2 was split into 5200 smaller patches with a mean patch size of 30 km2 and the largest patch being 16,850 km2 in size.

The authors recommend that infrastructure projects should not be established through the existing forests and when inevitable, proper mitigation strategies are vital to maintain connectivity. A more rational development plan would be to connect larger numbers of villages or people while safeguarding forests rather than to establish the shortest routes that would destroy forests, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. The study addresses the issue of fragmentation within forests and develops techniques that can be usefully applied to mitigate fragmentation problems in other fragile ecosystems such as tropical grasslands and savannas.