WII Technical Reports/Books/Manuals

India, one of the earliest signatories to the World Heritage Convention has five key Protected Areas currently on UNESCO’s World Heritage List - Kaziranga and Manas in Assam, Keoladeo Ghana in Rajasthan, Sundarbans in West Bengal and Nanda Devi in Uttaranchal. All five sites satisfy the natural heritage criterion ‘contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science and conservation’ (iv) and hence are critical to the preservation of globally Significant biodiversity. A strong potential exists to build and to strengthen the constellation of India’s World Heritage Biodiversity (WHB) sites in ways that are exemplary and beneficial for the larger network of PAs in India and abroad. The World Heritage Convention also offers a unique possibility in India to link nature and culture in innovative ways to promote conservation of species like the tiger and the elephant at a nation-wide scale. India presents the greatest challenge anywhere in the world for integrating conservation and development on a grand scale, and success here could have major implications for other parts of the developing world. The WHB sites symbolize humanity's struggle to conserve the earth's precious biological heritage against its own onslaught of nature. Combined with other Protected Areas such as National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries, WHB sites represent the last stand of the nature and the best hope for humanity to conserve our most precious endowment. India represents a remarkable example of successful efforts to conserve significant amounts of biodiversity against all odds. Despite the presence of more than one billion people, India has managed to place 154,826 km? of its land area under its PA network. Considerable amount of biodiversity also occurs in habitats outside protected areas. Furthermore, protected areas in India are among the best-managed reserves in the developing world. The WHB sites and other Protected Areas in India, however, remain highly vulnerable to degradation. As islands, these areas are surrounded by harsh biophysical landscapes and alienated local communities. The PA management is not fully equipped to deal with the growing threats to the parks. The staff is inadequately trained in the enforcement of laws protecting wildlife. In some cases such as Manas in the northeast, field staff is demoralized, having suffered setbacks due to insurgency and social turmoil in the area. Moreover, the field staff have neither access to good communications nor to facilities for health and education for themselves and their families and the basic infrastructure required for the effective management of the PAs are generally lacking. World Heritage Biodiversity Programme for . At higher levels, the park management has been unable to incorporate concepts of conservation science and wildlife management in developing management plans. Since parks represent habitat islands surrounded by dissimilar habitats with high densities of human populations, changes inside the park due to intrinsic and extrinsic factors are inevitable. However, there is no significant effort to adopt a systems approach to anticipate and predict future changes. Continuous assessment and monitoring of biodiversity are almost non-existent. The "island" status of the World Heritage sites also makes them highly vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures. Although these islands are connected to varying degrees with other natural habitats, there have been no comprehensive efforts to examine the feasibility of establishing habitat connectivity in areas containing the WBH sites. Since the areas surrounding sites are even more vulnerable to human pressures than the WBH sites, it is critical to examine the potential of connection among natural areas wherever these sites are located and to bring these areas under greater protection. A more serious problem is the lack of local community involvement in conservation efforts. Local communities in many cases remain hostile to the idea that the parks cannot be used for their traditional purposes of grazing, fishing, or extraction of fuel wood and non-timber forest products. Wild animals from the parks also pose a danger to their livestock, crops and houses, thus exacerbating the conflict. Thus, local communities perceive conservation legislation as a threat to their livelihoods. Although there are economic benefits from conservation, such as ecotourism, such benefits generally do not accrue to local communities. Protected areas also have a low profile. The civil society in general is not aware of the importance and in some cases even the existence of World Heritage sites. Although the protected areas have a tremendous educational potential, educational institutions hardly ever use world heritage sites for educational purposes. A new initiative funded by the United Nations Foundation (UNF) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and coordinated by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India initially covering four existing and ten proposed World Heritage Cluster Sites in India has been initiated to address the key conservation and management issues within a single new framework. This framework referred to as the ‘World Heritage Biodiversity Programme for India (WHBPI)’ has been developed through a collaborative planning process by the, Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). The ten year WHBP' will have two phases of four and six years each. Four of the existing five WHB sites in India namely Kaziranga, Keoladeo, Manas and Nanda Devi National Parks have been included in the WHBPI. programme as it is receiving a similar support from the Asian Development Bank under the ‘Sunderbans Biodiversity Project’. The goal of the WHBPI is to strengthen biodiversity conservation in Protected Areas by \ building replicable models at WHB sites that emphasize law enforcement, promote habitat integrity and connectivity, enhance the role of local communities in Protected Area management, improve the professional, social and political profile of the Protected Area management community and its civil society partners. The specific objectives of WHBP! are to: 1) increase the capacity of the staff to address critical needs in conservation, management and protection of the WHB sites, (2) enable the . park staff to incorporate principal concepts of modem science in management plans, (3) increase the connectivity among natural areas in the vicinity of the WHB sites, (4) enhance the stake and the involvement of local communities in the management and the protection of the parks, (5) raise the profile of the WHB sites in civil society, (6) bring about policy and governance reforms so that the management have the flexibility to address contemporary challenges to the conservation of biodiversity in the parks, and (7) conduct surveys at sites that may be designated as additional World Heritage. Biodiversity cluster sites.

In this report, assess the habitat characteristics, extent of fragmentation and its future trends, prey abundance and perception of the local communities towards lion conservation in the agro-pastoral landscape between the Gir PA and the Girnar forests to help in delineating the important dispersal corridor habitat between the Gir PA and the Girnar Wildlife Sanctuary, suggesting measures for its effective conservation

WII Technical Reports/Books/Manuals

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