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Conservation amidst political unrest: the case of Manas National Park,India
Get PDFAcross the world there exists a large overlap of biodiversity hotspots with areas experiencing high levels of sociopolitical and ethnic conflicts, making the impacts of such activities a critical factor for long-term conservation of biodiversity in these regions1. India is no exception with many forested areas, including
protected areas, experiencing conflicts of varying intensity owing to numerous complicated issues ranging from cultural identity to socio-political and environmental security. Such conflicts not only act as a major impediment to scientific monitoring, protection and management in the biodiversity-rich areas, but also
lead to abuse of wildlife and natural areas by conflict parties and opportunistic elements in the absence of adequate protection and monitoring forces. Therefore,
in the collective interest of biodiversity conservation, a greater challenge perhaps lies in devising new ways and
methods to conserve landscapes in strifetorn areas, where emotions are often charged up and conservation of biodiversity does not figure among the immediate
priorities
Unregulated aquaculture and invasive alien species: a case study of the African Catfish Clarias gariepinus in Vembanad Lake (Ramsar Wetland), Kerala, India
No full textIndiscriminate and illegal farming of the African Catfish Clarias gariepinus, in central Kerala has now resulted in the escape and spread of the species into Vembanad Lake, a large brackish water wetland and inland fish diversity hotspot. We collected 17 individuals of C. gariepinus ranging in size from 200 to 750 mm from different locations in the southern sector of the lake during a field survey conducted in 2007. Samples comprised of mature specimens of both sexes indicating their reproductive potential in the study area. The possible impacts of spread of C. gariepinus into natural water bodies of Kerala, especially the Vembanad Lake, and options for their management are discussed
Interdisciplinary analysis of the environment: insights from tropical forest research
No full textTropical forest management is a quintessential
interdisciplinary (ID) problem straddling the social natural divide, and has attracted scholars from many disciplines. This paper is a review of the ID research on tropical forests with a view to understanding the challenges involved in doing ID environmental research in general and the manner in which they might be addressed. Research on two core interdisciplinary questions in tropical forest research, namely causes of tropical forest loss and degradation and its impacts on society, is analysed to illuminate issues facing ID researchers. The challenges stem from differences in implicit values, theories and epistemologies across disciplines, as well as the relationship between individual disciplines, the
ID space and the wider applied research audience.
Understanding the value-laden nature of terms such as
forest loss and degradation leads to amultidimensional
and multidisciplinary characterization of the impact
of forest change on human well-being. The analysis
of causes of change has been enriched by ID research
in which forest outcomes are characterized explicitly
in terms of their values, measured in terms relevant
to these values and linked to chains of socioeconomic
variables at the appropriate scale. Explanations from
different disciplines may be reconciled to some extent by seeing each as partial and perhaps having context-specific validity, although some core tensions, especially between economists and anthropologists, remain. Insights from ID research have been unevenly internalized in the literature, pointing to the absence of a broadly shared ID space as a consequence of individual social science disciplines appropriating environment as a subject of study. Shifting from theory-driven to problem-driven research and reengaging
self-consciously in this applied ID space will be required to generate more rigorous and relevant ID research on forests
Commercial harvesting and regeneration of epiphytic macrolichen communities in the Western Ghats, India
No full textNon-timber forest products form a substantial contribution to the livelihood of many rural communities worldwide. In the Western Ghats, India, epiphyticmacrolichens are harvested by Paliyan tribes
to generate supplementary income. Paliyan tribes employ two harvesting methods: shallow harvesting, with a minimum of attached bark substratum, and deep harvesting, which exposes the sapwood. To evaluate the regeneration of the lichen community in terms of species diversity, abundance and composition, 320 bark samples of up to 50 cm2 were collected from bark patches where lichens had been harvested previously, as shown by bark scars. Samples selected represented four host tree species, both harvesting methods and seven one-year intervals of time since harvesting. In each case, the field guide estimated
sample age, and peer-testing proved these estimates to be reliable up to an age of seven years. Seven years after harvesting, the lichen community showed note worthy regeneration capacity in terms of total lichen coverage and species richness. However, to assess the risk of local species loss in the long-term, any harvesting should include continuous monitoring of lichen species composition. Since shallow harvesting resulted in a swifter recovery of species abundance and richness compared with deep harvesting, harvesters should preferentially employ the shallow harvesting method
Consistency of local perceptions of climate change in the Kangchenjunga Himalaya landscape
Get PDFThe Himalaya is experiencing rapid climate change that is likely to significantly impact local ecosystems,
biodiversity, agriculture and human well-being. However, the scientific community has been slow to examine the extent and consequences of climate change. Local communities have been coping with environmental change since millennia. Thus they often have considerable knowledge about environmental change and means to cope with its consequences. We (a) examined the perceptions
of local communities about climate change and its impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, agriculture and livelihoods in the Kangchenjunga Himalayas region; (b) analysed the consistency of perceptions across geographical regions, and (c) assessed the conformity between local perceptions
and scientific evidence. Our study is based on surveys conducted in 576 households, focus group discussions, key informant surveys and direct observations. The results show that people in the Kangchenjunga Himalayas region have considerable knowledge of climate change and its
effects on the weather, ecosystems, biodiversity and agriculture. These perceptions are consistent across the region and conform to scientific findings
The Challenge of Forest Diagnostics
No full textEcologists and practitioners have conventionally used forest plots or transects for monitoring changes in attributes of forest condition over time. However, given the difficulty in collecting such data, conservation practitioners frequently rely on the judgment of foresters and forest users for evaluating changes. These methods are rarely compared. We use a dataset of 53 forests in five countries to compare assessments of forest change from forest plots, and forester and user evaluations of changes in forest density. We find that user assessments of changes in tree density are strongly and significantly related to assessments of change derived from statistical analyses of randomly distributed forest plots. User assessments of change in density at the shrub/sapling level also relate to assessments derived from statistical evaluations of vegetation plots, but this relationship is not as strong and only weakly significant. Evaluations of change by professional foresters are much more difficult to acquire, and less reliable, as foresters are often not familiar with changes in specific local areas. Forester evaluations can instead better provide valid single-time comparisons of a forest with other areas in a similar ecological zone. Thus, in forests where local forest users are present, their evaluations can be used to provide reliable assessments of changes in tree density in the areas they access. However, assessments of spatially heterogeneous patterns of human disturbance and regeneration at the shrub/sapling level are likely to require supplemental vegetation analysis
Benefits of hyperspectral remote sensing for tracking plant invasions
No full textAim We aim to report what hyperspectral remote sensing can offer for invasion ecologists and review recent progress made in plant invasion research using hyperspectral remote sensing
Puntius madhusoodani (Teleostei: Cyprinidae), a new species of barb from Manimala River, Kerala, South India
No full textPuntius madhusoodani, a new species of barb is described from Manimala River, Kerala, South India. This species can be distinguished from all its congeners by the combination of following characters: presence of one pair of short maxillary barbels less than eye diameter and 4.39% in SL, a smaller snout forming 8.06% in SL, 25-26 lateral line scales; dorsal fin inserted nearer to tip of snout, than to caudal fin base; absence of spot at the dorsal fin base; paired fins hyaline, and the branched rays of the dorsal and anal fin tinted with black
Biological Diversity: A Common Heritage
No full textAs human biology is in no way determined by the political boundaries of nation states, tags of nationality cannot be attached to plants or animals or the genetic diversity that man has been conserving over generations. Developing nations should realise that a system of royalties for use of genetic resources through multinational arrangements would only heighten the mistrust and chaos. Despite being associated with geopolitical entities historically, genetic resources should be treated as a common heritage in the best interests of humanity
Biodiversity and Chemodiversity: Future Perspectives in Bioprospecting
No full textBiological diversity and its constituent chemical diversity have served as one of the richest sources of bioprospecting leading to the discovery of some of the most important bioactive molecules for mankind. Despite this excellent record, in the recent past, however, bioprospecting of biological resources has met with little success; there has been a perceptible decline in the discovery of novel bioactive compounds. Several arguments have been proposed to explain the current poor success in bioprospecting. Among them, it has been argued that to bioprospect more biodiversity may not necessarily be productive, considering that chemical and functional diversity might not scale with biological diversity. In this paper, we offer a critique on the current perception of biodiversity and chemodiversity and ask to what extent it is relevant in the context of bioprospecting. First, using simple models, we analyze the relation among biodiversity, chemodiversity and functional redundancies in chemical plans of plants and argue that the biological space for exploration might still be wide open. Second, in the context of future bioprospecting, we argue that brute-force high throughput screening approaches alone are insufficient and cost ineffective in realizing bioprospecting success. Therefore, intelligent or non-random approaches to bioprospecting need to be adopted. We review here few examples of such approaches and show how these could be further developed and used in the future to accelerate the pace of discovery