• Summary
  • Objectives
  • Status
  • Project Publications
  • Gallery
Summary

The Agasthyamalai and Periyar-Srivilliputhur hills constitute the southern-most ranges of the Western Ghats. They contain unique ecosystems and species, and are acknowledged as high priority areas for conservation. Large mammal movement between these ranges is increasingly rare owing to the rapid pace of habitat degradation and alteration in the intervening mosaic of multiple-use forests, estates and small settlements.

Objectives
  1. Quantify animal occupancy and habitat use patterns over the landscape, and factors that affect these.
  2. Quantify movement patterns for elephants.
  3. Identify areas suitable for establishing corridors at both the local and landscape level.
  4. Identify land use and cropping patterns, forest dependency and conservation attitudes among local residents, to inform future conservation work.
Status
  • Sign based presence/absence of animals, habitat variables and human disturbance related variables were collected through occupancy-based field surveys and analysed.
  • It was logistically impractical to undertake photographic capture-recapture of elephants in this landscape due to the poor road network, the difficulty in obtaining photographs clear enough for individual identification in evergreen forests and their inherently low densities in this area. All these made tracking on foot or vehicle unfeasible for a small field team.
  • Remotely sensed and field data on forest cover, land use, human disturbance and infrastructure have been collected and were analysed.
  • Socioeconomic surveys on land use and tenure patterns, forest dependency, conservation attitudes have been collected from all settlements in the study area, providing us with data on areas where conservation of the corridor is most viable in terms of social acceptability and strength of local institutions.
  • This study has been the first to collect quantitative data within a robust analytical framework on large mammal occurrence and distribution in this region. This will help ensure that connectivity for large mammals is implemented at a landscape level based on empirical data rather than presumed movement paths. It also implements data collection protocols that can be replicated on a larger scale.
  • The multi-criterion and multi-species approach used in this study helps ensure that a wide range of large mammals are considered in planning for connectivity, and the areas chosen are optimal based on both ecological and socioeconomic criteria.
  • This study has set a robust baseline for future research and conservation activities in this region. The biological parameters obtained can be quantified again in the future to assess changes in animal distribution and relative abundance as a result of human disturbance.