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Wildlife corridors
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Here it is discussed as wildlife corridors and conservation of wildlife.
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Chapter 1:Introduction: Wildlife corridors in the human-dominated
fragmented forest landscape
The multiple anthropogenic activities such as encroachment, clearing and cultivation of forest
land, human habitation, illegal and over exploitation of natural resources, and ill-planned
developmental activities in the forest areas leads to fragmentation and degradation of wildlife
habitats (Williams and Johnsingh 1996, Choudhury 2004, Bennett and Saunders 2010, Bawa et al.
2011, MacKenzie et al. 2011). Individual species may decline as a result of interacting exogenous
and endogenous threats, including developmental activities like roads-highways, railways, power
channel, industries, mining and quarrying, hydroelectric power projects in and around the
protected areas (WWF 2004, Butler and Laurance 2008, Laurance 2010). Apart from that,
establishment of coffee and tea plantations are highly problematic to wildlife, where most of the
plantations are established inside or near the buffer zones, which are critical wildlife habitats of
the forests (Watson 2001, Menon et al. 2005). As in the recent past, establishment of army
cantonment, resorts, hotels and dhabas in and around the forest areas will also indirectly affect the
wildlife, wildlife habitats and their migration/ movement (Menon et al. 2005).
Such activities will fragment and degrade the wildlife corridors and lead to isolation of plant and
animal populations especially large migratory wild herbivores and wide ranging carnivore species
by hampering movement and migration between fragmented forests (Sukumar 1990, Fischer and
Lindenmayer 2007, Walston et al. 2010). In the case of isolated and encapsulated populations of
large home ranging animals like elephants in fragmented forests surrounded by dense human
population, they have to move from resource poor habitats in search of water, suitable forage and
shade (Sukumar 1990, Baskaran 1998, IUCN 2003, Ramakrishnan 2008). During the process of
migration human presence hampers such seasonal and resource driven movements that leads to
human-wildlife conflict (HWC), especially the farmlands along or across the animal’s migratory
routes that are usually very close to forests experience high intensity of crop raiding or other types
of conflicts (Treves Naughton 1998). Subsequently such isolation may lead to species extinction
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, due to inbreeding depression as well as loss of life due to human-wildlife conflicts in the case of
large mammals (Brooks et al. 1999, Hilty et al. 2006, Singh and Chalisgaonkar 2006).
The viability of such populations can be considered through a metapopulation framework where
local extinction and colonization happen at random through the source pool (Hanski 1998,
Molofsky and Ferdy 2005). According to metapopulation, metacommunity and island
biogeography theories, small and more isolated habitat patches which were formed due to habitat
fragmentation can alter the community composition of many ecosystems (Hilty et al. 2006).
However metapopulation approach can work only if there is connectivity between the patches that
would facilitate the possibility of colonization of isolated fragments by dispersal and movement
of species from a source to sink mainly of through suitable connectivity, such as ‘wildlife
corridors’ (Bennett 2003).
The corridors will support the viability of such population locally in several ways as it can favor
the individual animal’s access to a larger area of habitat to forage, to facilitate the dispersal of
juveniles or to encourage the re-colonization, genetic exchange between local populations and
migration between the habitat due to climate change and habitat degradation (Bennet and
Mulongov 2006, Hilty et al. 2006). It has been reported that dispersal of more plant species and
movement of more animals species (specifically the native ones) persist in areas connected by the
corridors rather than in isolated areas of the same size (Haddad and Baum 1999, Levey et al. 2005).
What is wildlife corridor?
In general, wildlife corridor is a narrow strip of land with native vegetation that connects two or
more larger areas of similar habitats or forest fragments and is critical for the maintenance of
ecological processes including migration, colonization and interbreeding of plant and animal
communities, thus enhancing the chances of survival of species (Forman and Godron 1986,
Newmark, 1993, Turner et al. 2001, Hilty et al. 2006) and further the connectivity is important for
biological conservation (Taylor et al. 1993).
The term ‘connectivity’ itself has been often used loosely by different authors in different ways
(Tischendorf and Fahrig 2000, Uezu et al. 2005), which has contributed to considerable confusion
and debates (Simberloff et al. 1992). Though the term ‘connectivity’ coined by ecologist Gray
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