Connectivity of Tiger (Panthera tigris) Populations in the Human-Influenced Forest Mosaic of Central India

Abstract

Today, most wild tigers live in small, isolated Protected Areas within human dominated landscapes in the Indian subcontinent. Future survival of tigers depends on increasing local population size, as well as maintaining connectivity between populations. While significant conservation effort has been invested in increasing tiger population size, few initiatives have focused on landscape-level connectivity and on understanding the effect different landscape elements have on maintaining connectivity. We combined individual-based genetic and landscape ecology approaches to address this issue in six protected areas with varying tiger densities and separation in the Central Indian tiger landscape. We non-invasively sampled 55 tigers from different protected areas within this landscape. Maximum-likelihood and Bayesian genetic assignment tests indicate long-range tiger dispersal (on the order of 650 km) between protected areas. Further geo-spatial analyses revealed that tiger connectivity was affected by landscape elements such as human settlements, road density and host-population tiger density, but not by distance between populations. Our results elucidate the importance of landscape and habitat viability outside and between protected areas and provide a quantitative approach to test functionality of tiger corridors. We suggest future management strategies aim to minimize urban expansion between protected areas to maximize tiger connectivity. Achieving this goal in the context of ongoing urbanization and need to sustain current economic growth exerts enormous pressure on the remaining tiger habitats and emerges as a big challenge to conserve wild tigers in the Indian subcontinent.

Population and genetic outcomes 20 years after reintroducing bobcats (Lynx rufus) to Cumberland Island, Georgia USA

“…2008, 2014; Joshi et al. 2013; Ernest et al. 2014), including species such as the Iberian lynx Lynx pardinus , Eurasian lynx Lynx lynx, and Florida panther Puma concolor coryi , which have experienced severe population bottlenecks (Schmidt et al.…”

Triage of Means: Options for Conserving Tiger Corridors beyond Designated Protected Lands in India

“…Deforestation, road widening, mining, aggressive urbanization and unchecked human activity in corridors are major concerns about the viability of corridors in the Central Indian landscape (Sharma et al, 2013a;Yumnam et al, 2014;Borah et al, 2016). Most studies unanimously suggest that reducing anthropogenic pressure (Joshi et al, 2013) and restoring habitat (Yumnam et al, 2014) are solutions for the long term sustainability of corridors. In addition, others have suggested involving local communities through community centered conservation programmes and eco-tourism (Ravan et al, 2005;Rathore et al, 2012), which may ensure that local communities are still able to derive their livelihood from the corridor forests.…”

“…Due to the proximity of intensive human use areas, these multiple use forest areas suffer from anthropogenic pressures like resource extraction, grazing, mining, infrastructural developments and noise, light and air pollution. Despite the plethora of impediments, these corridors are still functional to allow the movement of animals across the landscape (Joshi et al, 2013;Sharma et al, 2013b). Many areas along these corridors are in a critical state due to fragmentation, degradation, and resource extraction.…”

Corridors at Crossroads: Linear Development-Induced Ecological Triage As a Conservation Opportunity

“…Securing the habitats and movement pathways of the tiger by extension equates to conserving all other species that share these forests (Roberge and Angelstam, 2004) and the invaluable ecosystem services provisioned by these forests. Habitat connectivity for tigers in Indian landscapes has been evaluated and mapped through GIS-based landscape permeability models Mondal et al, 2016), and genetic analysis in combination with landscape permeability models (Joshi et al, 2013;Yumnam et al, 2014), generating structural corridors. These corridor maps are used to identify corridors that may be threatened by road construction/expansion.…”