Nature Conservation Foundation

About: Nature Conservation Foundation is a nonprofit organization based out in Mysore, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Biodiversity. The organization has 153 authors who have published 375 publications receiving 10202 citations.

Conservation as if Biological Diversity Matters: Preservation versus Sustainable Use in India

Abstract: DEBATES OVER THE rationale for conservation are now fast being consigned to history. More people and governments than ever before recognise the need to conserve biological diversity, with over 180 countries now having become signatories to the International Convention on Biological Diversity (UNEP 1992). With the dawn of such a broad consensus, conservation debates have now focused more narrowly on the means of attaining the goal of conserving biological diversity (Gadgil 1992; IUCN et al. 1980; IUCN et al. 1991; Kramer et al. 1997; Terborgh 1999; Terborgh et al. 2002; Wells and Brandon 1992). The conservation community in India, as in other regions in the tropics, stands polarised between two forceful conservation paradigms: preservationism and sustainable use (Rangarajan 1995, 2001; Saberwal et al. 2001). Preservationism— hitherto the most common approach to conservation—entails the earmarking of state-administered ‘wildlife reserves’ within which extractive human activity is either greatly restricted, or completely halted using coercive means (Saberwal et al. 2001). It holds that, given India’s socio-economic and demographic milieu,

Optimizing individual identification and survey effort for photographic capture–recapture sampling of species with temporally variable morphological traits

Abstract: Endangered, wide-ranging megafauna have many threats to contend with during their struggle for survival in an ever-increasing human dominance of the environment. Reliable monitoring of endangered large mammal populations is therefore a critical conservation requirement. Photographic capture–recapture (CR) techniques have opened up avenues for population monitoring of individually recognizable large mammal species. The efficient application of these techniques, however, can be constrained by challenges in reliably identifying individuals arising from the use of multiple, and potentially variable traits, as well as issues of temporal sampling of populations in the field. We address these key problems by describing an automated process of rapidly identifying individual Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) from photographs, and comparing resultant CR-based population parameter estimates with those obtained using supervised visual identification of individuals. In addition, we assess the temporal effort necessary for robust estimation of demographic parameters in our study population. Morphological traits that maintain constancy over time, including variations in tusk characteristics, and ear fold and lobe shape, proved the most reliable for individual identification and subsequent estimation of population parameters. The use of temporally variable traits contributed to high probabilities of misidentification and biased estimates of population size. We found a minimum of seven sampling occasions necessary for reliable population estimation. Our study contributes to design issues for CR studies by providing insights into optimality of sampling effort such that precision of parameter estimates are not compromised while minimizing survey costs. We demonstrate the importance of accurate individual identification in the context of such studies and recommend the use of fixed morphological traits as the optimal individual identification strategy for species where animals are distinguished on the basis of multiple attributes, including some that may be variable over time.

Does mixed-species flocking influence how birds respond to a gradient of land-use intensity?

Abstract: Conservation biology is increasingly concerned with preserving interactions among species such as mutualisms in landscapes facing anthropogenic change. We investigated how one kind of mutualism, mixed-species bird flocks, influences the way in which birds respond to different habitat types of varying land-use intensity. We use data from a well-replicated, large-scale study in Sri Lanka and the Western Ghats of India, in which flocks were observed inside forest reserves, in 'buffer zones' of degraded forest or timber plantations, and in areas of intensive agriculture. We find flocks affected the responses of birds in three ways: (i) species with high propensity to flock were more sensitive to land use; (ii) different flock types, dominated by different flock leaders, varied in their sensitivity to land use and because following species have distinct preferences for leaders, this can have a cascading effect on followers' habitat selection; and (iii) those forest-interior species that remain outside of forests were found more inside flocks than would be expected by chance, as they may use flocks more in suboptimal habitat. We conclude that designing policies to protect flocks and their leading species may be an effective way to conserve multiple bird species in mixed forest and agricultural landscapes.

Sexual segregation in Eurasian wild sheep

Abstract: Sexual segregation, a widely observed phenomenon in vertebrates, is commonly categorized into habitat and social segregation. A universal explanation for sexual segregation is, however, lacking and debated. Causes of segregation and their division into proximate and ultimate causes is also highly debated, and the relative contributions of habitat and social factors to segregation are also seldom quantified. We studied the Eurasian wild sheep in trans-Himalayan rangelands to identify these causes and estimate the contributions of habitat and social components to sexual segregation. We observed male, lactating, and nonlactating female groups feeding during 3 springs and summers. The 3 groups strongly segregated and differed in their activity budgets, partly because of antipredation risks, with lactating females being the most vigilant (40% of the time). At the feeding habitat scale, males selected the patches of highest quality. We found that the social component contributed the most to segregation (70%) as compared with habitat segregation (30%). This is the first study that quantifies the contribution of habitat and social components to sexual segregation. We emphasize the role of antipredator behavior of lactating females on activity budgets and selection of relatively poor-quality sites as compared with other groups and illustrate that the usual division into proximal and ultimate causes of sexual segregation is not as clear-cut as usually presented. Key words: activity budget, habitat, Ovis, predation risk, social segregation. [Behav Ecol]

Local and Landscape Correlates of Primate Distribution and Persistence in the Remnant Lowland Rainforests of the Upper Brahmaputra Valley, Northeastern India

Abstract: Habitat fragmentation affects species distribution and abundance, and drives extinctions. Escalated tropical deforestation and fragmentation have confined many species populations to habitat remnants. How worthwhile is it to invest scarce resources in conserving habitat remnants within densely settled production landscapes? Are these fragments fated to lose species anyway? If not, do other ecological, anthropogenic, and species-related factors mitigate the effect of fragmentation and offer conservation opportunities? We evaluated, using generalized linear models in an information-theoretic framework, the effect of local- and landscape-scale factors on the richness, abundance, distribution, and local extinction of 6 primate species in 42 lowland tropical rainforest fragments of the Upper Brahmaputra Valley, northeastern India. On average, the forest fragments lost at least one species in the last 30 years but retained half their original species complement. Species richness declined as proportion of habitat lost increased but was not significantly affected by fragment size and isolation. The occurrence of western hoolock gibbon (Hoolock hoolock) and capped langur (Trachypithecus pileatus) in fragments was inversely related to their isolation and loss of habitat, respectively. Fragment area determined stump-tailed (Macaca arctoides) and northern pig-tailed macaque occurrence (Macaca leonina). Assamese macaque (Macaca assamensis) distribution was affected negatively by illegal tree felling, and rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) abundance increased as habitat heterogeneity increased. Primate extinction in a fragment was primarily governed by the extent of divergence in its food tree species richness from that in contiguous forests. We suggest the conservation value of these fragments is high because collectively they retained the entire original species pool and individually retained half of it, even a century after fragmentation. Given the extensive habitat and species loss, however, these fragments urgently require protection and active ecological restoration to sustain this rich primate assemblage.