In an unprecedented response to the rapid decline in wild tiger populations, the Heads of Government of the 13 tiger range countries endorsed the St. Petersburg Declaration in November 2010, pledging to double the wild tiger population. We conducted a landscape analysis of tiger habitat to determine if a recovery of such magnitude is possible. The reserves in 20 priority tiger landscapes can potentially support >10,000 tigers, almost thrice the current estimate. However, most core reserves where tigers breed are small and land-use change in rapidly developing Asia threatens to increase reserve and population isolation. Maintaining population viability and resilience will depend upon a landscape approach to manage tigers as metapopulations. Thus, both site-level protection and landscape-scale interventions to secure habitat corridors are simultaneous imperatives. Co-benefits, such as payment schemes for carbon and other ecosystem services, should be employed as strategies to mainstream landscape conservation in tiger habitat into development processes.

Summary 0[ Recovery of rainforest bird community structure and composition\ in relation to forest succession after slash!and!burn shifting cultivation or jhum\ was studied in Mizoram\ north!east India[ Replicate fallow sites abandoned after shifting cultivation 0\ 4\ 09\ 14 and ¼099 years ago\ were compared with primary evergreen and semi! evergreen forest using transect and quadrat sampling[ 1[ Vegetation variables such as woody plant species richness\ tree density and vertical strati_cation increased with fallow age in a rapid\ non!linear\ asymptotic manner[ Principal components analysis of vegetation variables summarized 81=7) of the variation into two axes] PC0 re~ecting forest development and woody plant succession "variables such as tree density\ woody plant species richness#\ and PC1 depicting bamboo density\ which increased from 0 to 14 years and declined thereafter[ 2[ Bird species richness\ abundance and diversity\ increased rapidly and asymp! totically during succession paralleling vegetation recovery as shown by positive cor! relations with fallow age and PC0 scores of sites[ Bamboo density re~ected by PC1 had a negative e}ect on bird species richness and abundance[ 3[ The bird community similarity "Morisita index# of sites with primary forest also increased asymptotically with fallow age indicating sequential species turnover during succession[ Bird community similarity of sites with primary forest "or between sites# was positively correlated with both physiognomic and~oristic similarities with pri! mary forest "or between sites#[ 4[ The number of bird species in guilds associated with forest development and woody plants "canopy insectivores\ frugivores\ bark feeders# was correlated with PC0 scores of the sites[ Species in other guilds "e[ g[ granivores\ understorey insectivores# appeared to dominate during early and mid!succession[ 5[ The non!linear relationships imply that fallow periods less than a threshold of 14 years for birds\ and about 49Ð64 years for woody plants\ are likely to cause substantial community alteration[ 6[ As 4Ð09!year rotation periods or jhum cycles prevail in many parts of north!east India\ there is a need to protect and conserve tracts of late!successional and primary forest[ Key!words] bird community structure\ habitat structure and~oristics\ human dis! turbance\ rainforest biodiversity conservation\ slash!and!burn[ Journal of Applied Ecology "0887# 24\ 103Ð120

Many small carnivores include rodents in their diet. However, due to varying evolutionary strategies, carnivores differ in their metabolism and energy requirements. Hence, comparisons of diet between carnivores would be more meaningful if the body size and energetics of the predators are considered. The diet of three small carnivores (jungle cat Felis chaus; caracal Caracal caracal; golden jackal Canis aureus) from a semi‐arid part of western India was studied through scat analysis, and the importance of rodents in their diet was estimated as a percentage of their daily energy requirement. Although percentage frequency in scats and biomass consumption showed rodents to be equally important to all three carnivores, energy calculations showed that rodents were more important as prey for the felids than the jackal. Up to 70% of the daily metabolizable energy in felids was obtained from rodents, as compared to 45% in the jackal. Rodents are generally viewed as pests, and their importance to the small carnivore community is overlooked. Change in land use over the decades in the arid/semi‐arid tract of western India has led to several adverse as well as favourable modifications in rodent assemblages, which could influence the persistence of species like the caracal and jungle cat in this region, that largely depend on rodents for their survival.

Conservation practices are supposed to get refined by advancing scientific knowledge. We study this phenomenon in the context of monitoring tiger populations in India, by evaluating the 'pugmark census method' employed by wildlife managers for three decades. We use an analytical framework of modern animal population sampling to test the efficacy of the pugmark censuses using scientific data on tigers and our field observations. We identify three critical goals for monitoring tiger populations, in order of increasing sophistication: (1) distribution mapping, (2) tracking relative abundance, (3) estimation of absolute abundance. We demonstrate that the present census-based paradigm does not work because it ignores the first two simpler goals, and targets, but fails to achieve, the most difficult third goal. We point out the utility and ready availability of alternative monitoring paradigms that deal with the central problems of spatial sampling and observability. We propose an alternative sampling-based approach that can be tailored to meet practical needs of tiger monitoring at different levels of refinement.