Synthesizing habitat connectivity analyses of a globally important human‐dominated tiger‐conservation landscape

Abstract

As ecological data and associated analyses become more widely available, synthesizing results for effective communication with stakeholders is essential. In the case of wildlife corridors, managers in human‐dominated landscapes need to identify both the locations of corridors and multiple stakeholders for effective oversight. We synthesized five independent studies of tiger (Panthera tigris) connectivity in central India, a global priority landscape for tiger conservation, to quantify agreement on landscape permeability for tiger movement and potential movement pathways. We used the latter analysis to identify connectivity areas on which studies agreed and stakeholders associated with these areas to determine relevant participants in corridor management. Three or more of the five studies’ resistance layers agreed in 63% of the study area. Areas in which all studies agree on resistance were of primarily low (66%, e.g., forest) and high (24%, e.g., urban) resistance. Agreement was lower in intermediate resistance areas (e.g., agriculture). Despite these differences, the studies largely agreed on areas with high levels of potential movement: >40% of high average (top 20%) current‐flow pixels were also in the top 20% of current‐flow agreement pixels (measured by low variation), indicating consensus connectivity areas (CCAs) as conservation priorities. Roughly 70% of the CCAs fell within village administrative boundaries, and 100% overlapped forest department management boundaries, suggesting that people live and use forests within these priority areas. Over 16% of total CCAs’ area was within 1 km of linear infrastructure (437 road, 170 railway, 179 transmission line, and 339 canal crossings; 105 mines within 1 km of CCAs). In 2019, 78% of forest land diversions for infrastructure and mining in Madhya Pradesh (which comprises most of the study region) took place in districts with CCAs. Acute competition for land in this landscape with globally important wildlife corridors calls for an effective comanagement strategy involving local communities, forest departments, and infrastructure planners.

An overview of computational tools for preparing, constructing and using resistance surfaces in connectivity research

“…There has been a call to incorporate anthropogenic resistance in connectivity mapping, that accounts for human behaviors that may impact the way animals use the landscape (Ghoddousi et al 2021). Recent studies present ways to synthesize resistance surfaces derived from different underlying data-types and modelling approaches to quantify consensus on landscape permeability and therefore be useful for conservation efforts (Schoen et al 2022). Based on our extensive overview of analytical tool that is further corroborated by the suggestions provided by survey respondents, we identified at-least three key avenues for future development of connectivity tools: (i) better incorporation and presentation of uncertainties in analyses (ii) the importance of including dynamism in connectivity models and (iii) refining and testing methods to automatically optimize resistance surfaces.…”

Assessing the vulnerability trifecta: species, climate, and anthropogenic pressures on protected areas of the Central Indian Highlands

“…Future vulnerability assessments in the CIH landscape might want to expand this work by incorporating corridor connectivity between PAs as an additional index of vulnerability for long‐term conservation and maintenance of gene flows. In addition, research in the context of biodiversity outside PAs and the importance of dispersal corridors in the CIH landscape have mostly been confined to mammalian fauna (Srivastha et al 2019, Jayadevan et al 2020, Thatte et al 2020, Puri et al 2022, Schoen et al 2022). Therefore, it is imperative that research focus should be directed towards studying how various taxonomic groups, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, plants, invertebrates, and aquatic species, outside of PAs and within wildlife corridors, will respond to anthropogenic and climatic changes.…”

State of human tiger conflict around Gunung Leuser National Park in Langkat Landscape, North Sumatra, Indonesia

“…The community's existence in a location of the animals' roaming area is certainly risky. Therefore, it is necessary to take appropriate habitat management interventions by combining anthropogenic and wildlife aspects to avoid victimization in the future (Wikramanayake et al 2004;Harihar et al 2014;Lamichhane et al 2019;Schoen et al 2022). The spatial analysis was performed using the method of overlapping (overlay) all variables of HTC.…”