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The extension of the Asian Elephant’s Elephas maximus range in the northern Western Ghats (Sahyadri) was observed since 2002. This colonization was marked by elephant crop raiding events in the newly colonized Sindhudurg District, where the local community had no experience of living with elephants. The present study was conducted to understand the spatiotemporal patterns of crop depredation (raiding) and to prioritize areas to inform future interventions on managing this ecological phenomenon turned conflict. Data on crop raiding between 2002 and 2015 was obtained from compensation records with the state forest department, and mapped at village scale. Subsequently, we used three indices of crop raiding, viz., Crop Raiding Frequency (CRF), Relative Crop Raiding Intensity (RCRI), and Crop Raiding Vulnerability Index (CRVI). Results show a gradual northern movement of elephants and of the crop raiding zone over the period of 2002–2015. The rankings provided by CRVI, identified villages in a narrow strip of foothills of the Sahyadri mountains as severely vulnerable. With sufficient long term data, CRVI would be a highly useful index for prioritization of villages for resolving human-elephant negative interactions; and other cases of human-wildlife interactions too.

The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus Gmelin) is a fish-eating specialist crocodylian, endemic to south Asia, and critically endangered in its few remaining wild localities. A secondary gharial population resides in riverine-reservoir habitat adjacent to the Nepal border, within the Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary (KWS), and nests along a 10 km riverbank of the Girwa River. A natural channel shift in the mainstream Karnali River (upstream in Nepal) has reduced seasonal flow in the Girwa stretch where gharials nest, coincident with a gradual loss of nest sites, which in turn was related to an overall shift to woody vegetation at these sites. To understand how these changes in riparian vegetation on riverbanks were related to gharial nesting, we sampled vegetation at these sites from 2017 to 2019, and derived an Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from LANDSAT 8 satellite data to quantify riverside vegetation from 1988 through 2019. We found that sampled sites transitioned to woody cover, the number of nesting sites declined, and the number of nests were reduced by > 40%. At these sites, after the channel shift, woody vegetation replaced open sites that predominated prior to the channel shift. Our findings indicate that the lack of open riverbanks and the increase in woody vegetation at potential nesting sites threatens the reproductive success of the KWS gharial population. This population persists today in a regulated river ecosystem, and nests in an altered riparian habitat which appears to be increasingly unsuitable for the continued successful recruitment of breeding adults. This second-ranking, critically endangered remnant population may have incurred an "extinction debt" by living in a reservoir that will lead to its eventual extirpation.

While global mammalian diversity is collapsing due to increased poaching and habitat loss, evidence-based conservation in protected areas is often regarded as a panacea. Tiger reserves in India set an example, where annual camera trap monitoring is conducted for understanding the trends in the tiger population. However, less is known about other co-predators and their prey species that occur in the same area. The fundamental hindrance being the absence of individual pelage pattern within these species (i.e. unique pattern on the body), as well as the absence of species-specific monitoring. As a result, there is a demand in techniques that can avail maximum biodiversity information from the existing monitoring protocols. Here, we conducted camera trapping in Periyar Tiger Reserve to evaluate spatiotemporal overlaps within different carnivores, and between prey-predators. Camera trapping was conducted at high resolution (2 km2) for 30 days at 253 locations that yielded 6092 photographs of 18 mammals. Their temporal overlap was estimated using ‘overlap’ R package, while the spatial association was estimated using ‘co-occur’ package. Three large-ranging top predators (tiger, leopard and dhole) were found to have activity peaks segregated temporally. Relationship of these predators with their prey species highlighted the role of body sizes, where largest predator (tiger) had higher overlap with large-bodied prey (gaur and sambar), while small-bodied predator (leopard and dhole) overlapped small-bodied prey (barking deer and wild pig). Results highlight the importance of large-sized prey in conserving the tiger densities of this region. However, selectively conserving only large-bodied prey can have repercussions on other sympatric carnivores, who require different body-sized prey species. Our results have implications for all protected areas in the tropical developing countries, which are mostly smaller in area with species-centered conservation agenda. We highlight the importance of considering species-specific carrying capacity of all co-predators in the region, to optimally conserve the prey-base through habitat restoration, so as to maximize biodiversity conservation within a limited area.

Climate change poses a major threat to the survival of alpine mammals living in fragmented habitats with poor dispersal abilities. Among these important prey species, pikas are considered especially vulnerable to rising temperatures that would impede their surface activity and dispersal. We investigated how climatic regimes influence the niche of the Royle’s pika (Ochotona roylei), and which climatic drivers and change trajectories may threaten the species’ future sustenance, thereby prioritizing areas for future conservation of this species across its distribution range. We used Royle’s pika presence locations in the MaxEnt framework, along with biologically relevant climatic and topographical variables, to model the present (2010) and the future (2050, 2070) climatic niche under different future scenarios projected by CCSM4 climatic models. Subsequently, we estimated the climatic niche loss across the elevation gradient, longitudinal gradient, and both inside and outside protected areas for all countries within the species’ range. Niche suitability of the Royle’s pika was substantially determined by precipitation of the coldest quarter (~snow cover) and wettest quarter (~monsoon rainfall). As these parameters are known to be vulnerable to global climatic change, our projection revealed significant loss (102 km2/year) in the species niche availability across all future scenarios, particularly in non-protected low-elevation regions. By identifying areas where species survival may be threatened, we confirmed that the distribution of Royle’s pika, an important prey species, might be reduced by climate change. Our findings can aid in conservation planning strategies for this species and other alpine fauna and contribute to ongoing efforts to monitor change in the Himalaya.

India, a megadiverse tropical country is grappling with the issue of biological invasions. As a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity, India is committed for managing its major biological invasions by 2020. Lack of prioritization of invasive species for control and management is the biggest hurdle for achieving this commitment. We reviewed 21 High Concern Invasive Species (HiCIS) across four major ecosystems (terrestrial mainland, island, freshwater, and marine) in India, utilizing the prioritization framework for understanding the existing knowledge and gaps. We reviewed the existing peer-reviewed and grey literature on HiCIS for information on their ecology, impacts, and management. Prioritization framework provided “priority scores” and “confidence scores” to each HiCIS, where priority score comprised of the species’ ecology and its management lacunae. Confidence score represented the reliability of the priority score. We found that invasions on terrestrial mainland ecosystem in India are the most studied invasions followed by freshwater, island, and marine ecosystem. Priority score of a given HiCIS was positively correlated with its impacts on biodiversity (R = 0.63), physical environment (R = 0.70), and ecosystem services (R = 0.60). This correlation supports scientific focus on deleterious species. The study also indicates policies and guidelines in place for management of invasions as a part of a larger scheme or Legal Act, resulting in their obscurity to the managers, and hindering management of HiCIS. This quantitative synthesis provides a model framework for countries struggling with channelizing management efforts to an overwhelmingly large number of invasive species.

Unlike humans, political and physical boundaries do not limit animals that are long ranging. However, due to political, economic and social conflicts between countries, it is the wildlife that takes a hit. This has been recognized by many countries and effective measures of trans-boundary conservation have successfully been implemented. This has not only paved the way for the conservation of species that range in multiple countries but has also enhanced cooperation between countries on several fronts. In this article, we highlight the need for similar trans-boundary measures between India and Pakistan and focus on a few species which can act as potential flagship species in this regard. In the background of global commitments by India and nations for conserving the freedom of movement, and for securing the services offered by these ecological flows to the people of both nations, we propose a scientific discussion for establishing trans-boundary peace parks.

Free-ranging dogs are among the top global invasive species with major impacts on biodiversity and humans. Academicians in conservation or allied fields are at the forefront of investigating this conflict. But are their opinions impaired by their emotional attachment with dogs? We investigated this question through an online survey that reached 360 academicians across 139 institutions in India. We assessed the respondent's affinity towards dogs and their perception on their impacts, causes of this problem, suggestions on its mitigation and success of the mitigation measures. We found that although affinity towards dogs had no effect on respondent's perceptions of their impacts, their perceptions on the causes and suggested mitigation measures differed. Respondents who liked dogs suggested ineffective measures like reproductive control and mass adoption to mitigate their impacts, while also acknowledging that the suggested mitigation measures would never work due to multiple reasons. Through our results we show that academicians who are presumed to provide evidence-driven solutions opted for value-driven suggestions. This could be due to high consideration given to emotions in animal rights policies in the country. We interpret this contradiction using cognitive dissonance theory and suggest a need of encouraging a scientific temper of evidence-based mitigation measures.

Presently, it is debated if regional conservation efforts can alone resolve the ecological problems that global climatic changes could bring. Biological invasion is one of such concerns. In the present study, we modeled how change in global climate and regional anthropogenic pressure can impact the distribution of invasive Lantana camara in the Upper Ganga valley of the Western Himalaya (India). The forest in the study area was stratified into 1 km2 grid and two 15 m radius plot were located in each of the forest types in the grid, for recording Lantana presence. In total, 2221 plots were sampled covering 22% of forest. We used predictors representing the climate, forest patch size, fire and natural disaster variables for modeling the species distribution using maximum entropy algorithm. We further simulated 12 future landscape scenarios based on the global trends of these parameters. The present species—environment relationship was projected to these future landscape scenarios. Lantana was presently estimated to spread in 231 km2 of the study area. It invaded larger forest patches in the sub-tropical region, and smaller disturbed forest patches in the warm and cold temperate region. Increased distribution of Lantana was projected across all the future scenarios. The study revealed how global climate changes and regional anthropogenic pressure can have a synergistic effect on the expansion of invasive species in the future. It thus questions the efficiency of conducting only regional efforts in absence of global initiative to reduce the greenhouse gases emission.

Estimating the distribution of invasive species and understanding the ecological reasons for their success is crucial for their management. Moreover, their ability to invade biogeographically distinct regions in short timespans poses interesting ecological questions. Lantana camara (sensu lato) is one such invasive species of global concern. In an unprecedented effort, we surveyed 207,100 km2 of Indian forests by sampling 13715 grids of 5 × 5 km, each with 1–31 plots of 10 m diameter, to record the abundance of Lantana. For India, we modeled occupancy of Lantana in the sampled area by accounting for imperfect detection; and potential invasion outside the sampled area using MaxEnt with covariates of climate, soil, forest and human disturbance. Further, Lantana’s response in comparable areas of its native and global invaded range was modeled using MaxEnt to provide a better understanding of its changing relationship with environmental factors. Lantana invaded 154,837 km2 of the surveyed area, and threatened 303,607 km2 of total Indian forests (44%); with preference to warm, humid, fertile areas, degraded by extractive human use. By combining our large-scale ground surveys with published data, we show that Lantana has expanded its climatic niche worldwide, with >11 million km2 suitable for its invasion. Niche comparison revealed that Lantana might have adaptive plasticity in its invaded range; where it was found to be more tolerant to higher temperatures, lower fertility and shade as compared to its native range. In light of Lantana’s introduction history that suggest excessive hybridization between previously allopatric populations, and its known genetic diversity in the invaded range, the existing adaptive plasticity is suggestive of contemporary evolution. This adaptive nature can increase area under its invasion and pose an ecological conundrum of managing an evolving neophyte.