M Sc Dissertation(WII)
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Item Assessing the Impacts of Road Network on Wildlife Corridors and Mitigation Measures in Assam : Transportation Against Animal Corridor(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2021) Borgohain, Roshme; Habib, Bilal; Ramesh, C.Protected Area Networks (PA) and Conservation Areas (CA) are very essential for ensuring the conservation of wildlife. However, the connectivity among these protected areas is much more important to ensure the viable population of species. Furthermore, the increase in infrastructural development and human encroachment leading to the fragmentation of forests and the natural habitat of wildlife species. The wildlife corridors are the essential structures to connect the fragmented areas, ensure the viability of the isolated population, restores the genetic variations, corridors also increases the habitat diversity in the two habitat patches that it connects, it provides a passage for migration and also acts as an escape route in cases of fire in one patch. Overall wildlife corridors are structures that are important for conservation. Although these protected areas were not well connected the corridor structures help to maintain the continuity of the area. The state falls under North-East India Biogeographic zones under the Province North-East-East-Brahmaputra Valley (9B), (Rodgers and Panwar 1998). In Assam, there are seven National Parks and twenty Wildlife Sanctuaries occupying the area of 3925+ sq. km, where two are designated as World Heritage site (WHS) which is the highest designation given to the protected area. Out of twenty-seven protected area in Assam, fifteen were bifurcated by road networks and there are total eleven corridors, connects the protected areas, eight corridors were cut at multiple places by roads. These connections of the corridors are essential to maintain the contiguous landscape, which is further essential for maintaining the integrity of the WHS. In this study, I have tried to look at the current status of the wildlife corridor portion bifurcated by the road networks in Assam. The objective of the study is 1) What is the extent of different types of road networks concerning PAs and corridors in the State of Assam? 2) What is the land use pattern near the corridor bifurcated by the road? 3) Characterize the current status of the corridor sites impacted by the road network.Item Subsidized Mammals: Understanding the mammalian interactions with garbage sites around Western- Rajaji Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2024) Nagarale, Shashank; Habib, Bilal; Shrotriya, Shivam; Pandav, BivashAnthropogenic food subsidies in the form of garbage dumps are widespread across the globe. When such sites are found around protected areas/wildlife habitats, wildlife is observed to exploit these subsidies as food resources. Foraging on such human-derived foods may have a negative or positive impact on individual to community/ecosystem levels. It becomes important to know the species associated with garbage dumps when found around protected areas and understand the interactions happening at the garbage dumps. This study was conducted aiming to know the animals at risk and also increase our understanding of these novel setups. I deployed 13 IR camera traps at total 10 garbage sites resulting in a cumulative effort of 437 trap nights at the garbage site. The camera trap data was processed using Megadetector & SpSeg packages in python. This data was used to get the Relative Abundance Index with respect to 437 trap nights. Sambar (RAI= 8.35) was the species with the highest visitations at the garbage site, followed by Indian crested porcupine (RAI= 2.70) and spotted deer (RAI= 2.15). Synanthropes like rhesus macaque (RAI= 1.78 ) and wild pig (RAI= 1.67) were the most visitors following spotted deer. I hypothesised that synanthropic species will have higher visitations because of distribution outside protected areas, followed by omnivores from the forest area as compared to herbivores and carnivores from the forest areas because of their ability to exploit larger variety of food resources. The data from this study rejected this hypothesis as forest dwelling species like sambar and Indian crested porcupine visited these sites more as compared to other synanthropes. Lesser visitations by omnivores like golden jackal, small indian civet, small indian mongoose; carnivore like common leopard along with scavenger striped hyena was a result of the less percentage of poultry waste (0.33% at only one site) in the garbage sites. I collected data on variables such as distance of the garbage site from the protected area, human infrastructure and waterbody, also quantified the size of the garbage site in terms of perimeter, NDVI difference between the protected area and garbage site as a surrogate of vegetation cover, relative abundance of each species in the adjoining protected area and calculated the composite RAI values of human, dogs/cats and livestock as a disturbance measure . I quantified the garbage in broader categories using a 1 m2 quadrat which was divided into smaller sets of 25x25 cm2. A total of 39 plots were laid for all the garbage site. The categories quantified were food wrappers & food disposables, food materials, religious offerings, agriculture discards, dung plates, sanitary waste, construction waste, carcass & poultry waste, pharmaceutical waste, cloths and plastic and others. The relation between relative abundances within protected area and visitations at the garbage site was assessed using Spearman correlation test along with Wilcoxon test p-values. With the available dataset I used ANOSIM using ‘vegan’ package in R program v4.1.2 to investigate the effect by considering the dissimilarity of the communities between sites based on the RAI values of the species for each garbage site. Relative abundance from protected area was not related to visitation of the species at the garbage site. Out of the selected variables, the ANOSIM values suggested the effect of ‘distance between garbage site and protected area’ on forest species and synanthropes. The effect of the ‘size of garbage site’ on the species could not be tested as there was not much variation in the sizes of the garbage sites. Human, dogs/cats and livestock presence affected the forest species, suggesting their sensitivity towards disturbances, while synanthropes were found to have affinity with the NDVI difference between protected area and garbage sites (vegetation cover at the garbage site) and the ‘percentage of food materials available in the garbage site’. To understand the co-occurrences at the garbage site, I modified the probabilistic models for co-occurrences (Veech, 2013) to get pair-wise associations at the temporal scale of one hour. A total 13 mammals avoided co-occurring with humans (and vehicle) while nine with livestock and dogs. Co-occurrences were found to be there between sambar and Indian crested porcupine at two out of three religious sites and at a household site, suggesting high tolerance levels to each other’s presence at the garbage site to exploit the resources. One of the sites was visited by barking deer with spotted deer group/herd. This association by solitary living barking deer can be for foraging effectively by reducing vigilance efforts in a group.Item Visitation Pattern of Mammalian Communities at Waterholes in Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2021) Yathumon, M.A.; Nigam, Parag; Habib, Bilal; Gopi, G.V.Waterholes are an important component of management practices in wildlife conservation, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. It is of high conservation and management significance as it is a spatially restricted resource for wildlife. I studied visitation pattern of mammals at 54 waterholes in the core zone of Tadoba - Andhari Tiger Reserve, a dry deciduous forest in the central India. Visitations of mammal species were monitored continuously for four months using camera traps. Visitation frequencies of mammals at the waterholes were checked and compared between winter and summer seasons. Influences of (i) physical attributes of waterholes, (ii) distance between the waterholes and adjacent permanent water sources, (iii) distance to nearest road and (iv) the presence of tourism in the nearest road, on the visitations of mammals at waterholes were studied. It was found that there are differences in the number of visitations, total time spent and the average time spent in a visitation between mammal species and between same species in different seasons. Size of waterholes and artificial water supplementation influenced the visitations of some mammals at waterholes. Overlaps in the temporal visitation patterns of the prey species with that of the predator species were different for ambush predators and pursuit predators.Item How Disturbed are the Disturbed Ones ? Impacts of Anthropogenic Stressors on the Socio-Ecological Interactions of Terai Gray Langur (Semnopithecus hector) in Shivalik Hills(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2021) Dwivedi, Divya; Habib, Bilal; Qureshi, QamarAnimals respond to the changes in their habitats numerically and behaviourally. Alterations caused by anthropogenic stresses, like habitat degradation, fragmentation, urbanisation, changes in land use patterns, etc., changes the ecology of most species. Understanding the patterns adopted by these species to successfully survive and reproduce in such habitats is of utmost importance. This study tried to understand the impacts of human disturbance on the socio-ecology of Terai Gray langurs in Shivalik landscape, by comparing the ecology of langur troops inside the protected forest with the troops in disturbed forest. Four troops of Terai Gray langur, of comparable sizes, two in each treatment were selected.Item Impacts of Road Related Disturbances on Mammalian and Vegetational Assemblages : A Case Study of SH-33 Passing Through Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, Karnataka(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2019) Siva, R.; Habib, Bilal; Gubbi, SanjayUpcoming economies such as India need to strengthen their road network for the socioeconomic development of the country. While roads are important to the country, they are a threat to wildlife when they pass through the protected areas and other ecologically sensitive areas. Multiple impacts of roads on wildlife range from habitat loss, edge effects, vehicular traffic, pollution, animal mortality, barrier effect to invasion by alien flora and fauna. This project revealed the impacts of road-related disturbances on mammals and vegetation in Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, Karnataka. Mysore-Mananthavadi road (SH-33) is passing through the southern part of Nagarahole Tiger Reserve that has two segments in which one segment is decommissioned and another segment is closed for the vehicular traffic during the night. Here, I have compared the habitat use of mammals in these two segments using camera traps and assessed the impact of road-related disturbances on vegetation in this road by vegetation sampling. Vehicular density was estimated using the camera traps in these two segments.The study results revealed the avoidance of vehicular traffic segment by the mammals and activity pattern seems to be relatively unaffected by the vehicular traffic. It also shows the change in the vegetation composition and spread of invasive species due to road related disturbances.Item The serprntine devil: roads in the wood - a study on the impacts of a national highway on wildlife in Haridwar Forest Division(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2017) Sultan; Pandav, Bivash; Habib, Bilal1. The ongoing and reckless development of linear infrastructure around the world can well be compared to sweet venom. Sweet for humans, venom for wildlife. Roads in particular, entail wide ranging impacts on wildlife. The most conspicuous of all is wildlife mortalities due to collision with vehicles. Of the indirect impacts i.e., barrier effects are the most widely acknowledged. For wild animals, these effects can lead to the development of avoidance behaviour (road avoidance, vehicle avoidance and traffic emission avoidance). Road densities around the world are expected to increase rapidly in the near future which will magnify the impact on natural habitats. It is therefore imperative to study the ill effects of roads, factors influencing them and suggest effective mitigations measures. 2. My study aimed to understand the impacts of a 30km stretch of National Highway 74 on wildlife in Haridwar Forest Division. The highway bisects the intensive study area (150 sq km.), cutting through three wildlife rich forest ranges of the Haridwar Forest Division. The highway carries a huge traffic volume and a high number of road-kills have been reported in the past. 3. The study was carried out with the following objectives: 1. to understand the extent of wildlife mortalities and the factors governing them ii. to understand ungulate habitat use and density distribution with respect to road iii. to suggest effective mitigation measures that can minimise the impact of NH- 74 on wildlife in the study areaItem Response of Leopard (Panthera pardus fusca) in Varying Density of Tiger (Panthera tigris) in Rajaji National Park, Uttarakhand(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2015) Rathore, Harshvardhan Singh; Pandav, Bivash; Habib, BilalApex predators hold a special position in ecosystems due to their well known top down effects. Intra-guild competition is an integral process that affects population dynamics of large carnivores and may cause trophic cascades. In India tiger and leopard are two large sympatric felids undergoing intra-guild competition. The two co-exist by segregating in their spatial, temporal and dietary niche. Rajaji National Park (RNP) provides an ideal condition to study interaction amongst large predators. Following human settlements relocation in the past decade, the tiger . population has recovered in eastern RNP whereas due to lack of connectivity it has declined in western RNP. Thus, RNP provides a perfect ecological setup to study responses of leopard and prey in varying tiger density gradient. I assessed prey abundance in RNP using line transect based distance sampling using software Distance 6.2. Leopard and tiger density- were also estimated by using camera trap pictures on a capture- mark recapture framework using spatially explicit capture- recapture models. Spatial separation was seen between the two carnivores by using density surface models. Principal prey, prey selection and their dietary overlap was also assessed. High abundance of major prey was seen with the density of chital ranging from 23.61±9.21 Isq.km in eastern RNP to 21.77±4.32/sq.km in western RNP and sambar ranging from 10.61±3.21/sq.km in eastern RNP to 15.65±2.52/sq.km in western RNP. The density estimates of leopard were 29.01± 4.00/100 ~q.km and 25.37 ± 2.63/100 sq.km for the eastern and western sector respectively. The density estimates of tiger were 3.03±0.95/100 sq.km and 0.28±0.23/100 sq.km (only two tiger) for the eastern and western sector respectively. Leopard diet was primarily composed of chital in eastern RNP, in the western sector it was dominated by sambar. Chital was the principal prey species of tiger in RNP. Spatial separation was seen between tiger and leopard in both the sectors of the park with leopards clearly avoiding the high intensity usage areas of tigers. This study has created baseline data for predator and prey in RNP and would be helpful in managing the park better and for future monitoring.Item A Whistle Amongst Growls : Dholes in a Multi Predator System in Dry Deciduous Forests of India(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2015) Ghaskadbi, Pallavi; Habib, Bilal; Qureshi, QamarA significant amount of research has proved that there is a positive correlation between habitat heterogeneity/diversity and animal 'species diversity owing to the availability of more exploitable niches (Tews et al. 2004). On a spatial scale for free ranging large carnivores, a place like the Tadoba- Andhari Tiger Reserve has a low habitat heterogeneity, however, it shows a variety of species of both predators and prey in a small area. Studying the prey- predator interactions in such a system would lead to a better insight into large carnivore ecology. In contrast with the African Wild dog which enjoys much more attention of researchers and biologists, the Dhole has clearly not been a favourite. Being a social carnivore, there is a complex and dynamic fission and fusion of packs amongst Dholes. However, there is a grave lack of information on the pack dynamics of the Dhole. I attempted to conduct experiments to study one of the fundamental factors of social behaviour which is individual recognition.Item Responses of Raninforest Lizard Communities to Tea Plantation Edges in the Anamalai Hills of Southern Western Ghats India(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2013) Malgaonkar, Aditya, S.; Habib, Bilal; Vasudevan, KarthikeyanHuman-made edges are an omnipresent form of altered habitats across the entire Western Ghats landscape. Furthermore a diverse range of edge types exist differing in the structure and composition of their altered surrounding habitat. Only a few attempts have been made to study the influence of the structure of this adjoining habitat or the 'matrix' on edge effects. Understanding the influence of different matrix habitats on edges will lead to the better understanding of the abiotic and biotic influences of the matrix on forest edges. Vegetation structure and composition has been the subject of several studies pertaining to fragmentation as well as effects of edges and both primary as well as secondary responses to edge effects have been documented. It has also been noted that while the reduction in plant species richness may occur as a result of decreasing forest area, it is more likely that this could be the result of increasing perimeter to area ratio resulting from fragmentation and increased proportion of area exposed to edge effects. The abiotic as well as biotic changes which affect vegetation not only bring about structural changes such as those in canopy cover, vertical stratification, density etc, but also affect functional aspects of plant communities such as pollination, seed dispersal and germination. Faunal communities respond in various ways to changes in their habitat; these may include changes in abundance, species richness, structure and composition of communities as well as behaviour of individual species. With respect to edge effect these changes or may vary in their magnitude and the distance or depth to which they penetrate into the interior. Magnitude and depth of influence are two complementary but distinct aspects of edge effects. Magnitl1de of influence is the degree to which a response value (a biotic or abiotic variable used to measure edge effects) differs between the edge and the interior while depth of influence if the maximum distance to which edge effects percolate into a habitat. However. A large amount of research on this topic has been restricted to birds and mammals and the responses shown by them might not be representative of the responses of other lesser known taxa.Item Effect of Inter-Habitat Matrix on Tropical Evergreen Forest Remnants : An Emprical Test of Matris-Tolerrance Hypothesis on Butterflies(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2013) Kumar, Deepak C.; Talukdar, Gautam; Habib, Bilal; Kunte, KrushnameghRecent studies on habitat fragmentation has highlighted the importance of inter-habitat matrix and the need for a shift from traditional binary perspective to a 'matrix composition' ·perspective for understanding species diversity patterns in human modified landscapes . Matrix-tolerance model provides a simple framework for understanding the sensitivity of species to fragmentation by simultaneous study of native forest patches and surrounding matrix. According to this model, abundance of a species in the matrix is inversely proportional to its vulnerability to fragmentation. This study tested the matrix-tolerance hypothesis on butterflies of tropical evergreen forest remnants, surrounded by a matrix of coffee plantation and paddy field in Kodagu region of Western Ghats. Western Ghats is rich in butterfly fauna represented by 333 species of which 33 are endemic to the biogeographic region. The region is also characteristic in having human modified habitats with relatively large proportion of native forest patches which calls for a landscape level approach for conservation. In order to test the matrix tolerance hypothesis sampling was carried out in 16 sites which included 7 in fragments (sacred groves), 7 in matrix (5 in coffee plantations, 2 in paddy field) and 2 in large contiguous forest (Reserve Forest). For abundance estimation of butterflies, time constrained surveys were carried out 3 times in each site between January 10 and April 8, 2013. An index related to fragmentation vulnerability was generated for each species using abundance data obtained from time-constrained surveys. The Fragmentation Vulnerability Index, FVI was defined as the ratio between average abundance of the species in the fragments and average abundance in the continuous patch. Spearma'n's rank correlation was then used to test the association between rank FVI and rank matrix abundance. Various microclimatic and habitat variables were measured in matrix sites and Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) were constructed to test their association with estimated species richness. Analyses were carried out using SPSS 16 and R (version 3.0.1, R core team 2013) software. The present study shows that the relation between abundance of species in the inter-habitat matrix and its vulnerability to fragmentation is positive and significant (rs= 0.514, p = 0.001, N = 37). Species which are capable of tolerating the matrix are found to be less vulnerable to fragmentation. Some species deviate from the expected model in their response to habitat fragmentation which could possibly be explained by examining species specific traits. Fragment size didn't have a significant effect on relation between matrix abundance and fragmentation vulnerability index (F=0.758, p=0.387, df=l), unlike expected from previous studies. This could either be due to smaller range of fragment sizes in the present study or due to confounding factors like patch isolation and patch quality which can mask the effect of patch size. Among various habitat 'and microclimatic variables, canopy cover was found to be 'important predictor of ciliated species richness in matrix sites (weight = 0.8, ~ = 0.8, P = 0.008). Coffee plantations generally have a moderate level of canopy cover which is favorable for most butterfly species. But compared to paddy field~ the canopy cover is higher in coffee plantations and this could be the reason for increase in species richness with increasing canopy cover in matrix sites.