Status Survey of Some Mammals in Gujarat With Special Reference to Chinkara and Desert Cat
Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. Study area. 3. Methodology. 4. Results. 5. References. Photoplates.
Rising human population and economic development persistently increase pressure on availability of land and natural resources. This phenomenon is slowly but steadily engulfing wilderness outside and sometimes even within protected areas leaving highly fragmented habitats wherein population of wild animals has gone to a very low lavel. The State of Gujarat is not an exception to it and facing these threats in the form of loss of habitat, hunting presure, loss of prey base, population fragmentation, inadequate protected area coverage and poorly developed administrative structures in the field. Moreover, the precise distribution and status of many taxa are not identified, also little is known of their ecology, and even if known, it is for a few flagship species only. In the coming decades, the principal challenge facing wild animals of the State is to ensure that the species whose status is currently precarious do not get extinct like others which have disappeared altogether (for example Cheetah Acinonyx jubatus) from the region. To achieve the target abundance of any species is probably less important than mapping the distribution as well as identifing and maintaining possible corridors between the populations and also dealing with site-specific threats to their existence.
By producing this document an attemp has been made here to fill this gap by providing temporal and spatial distribution of the lesser known animals inhabiting outside protected areas and/or close to human settlements as well as their activity areas. This report is based on the sightings of the animals as well as response to inperson interactive queries from forest officials, knowledgeable villagers, shepherds, forest field staff, officials of NGOs and old shiakaries regarding presence/absence, abundance and population trend of a species in each unit area (i.e. forest block). The data was gathered from 574 forest blocks belonging to 150 forest ranges and 18 districts constituting about 68% of the total land area of the State and was the source for generating species wise current distribution pattern, relative abundance and population trend maps of 34 species of terrestrial mammals in a finer scale than otherwise available earlier usually at district/State level. Moreover, because these maps are in GIS domain, this information can be analyzed in the background of vast amount of remote sensing and other environmental variables like vegetation, climate, soil, terrain etc. and their natural prey/competetiors for knowledge based interactive decision making and management. Furthermore, ecology and conservation related information like, habitat requirements, population status, food and foraging behaviour, social behaviour, reproduction and denning behaviour, sources of mortality, persecution etc. was also provided for each species as means to the biological basis for their management.
These 34 species belongs to fifteen families and six orders of class mammalia. Out of total thirty-four, 21 species are either in schedule I, II or III of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972; 19 species are either listed under Appendix I, II or III of CITES and 13 species are Endangered, Vulnerable or Near Threatened under Redlist of the IUCN. Based on present study 25 species were classified as threatened while nine are out of immediate danger.
The results of the study indicates that Jackals (Canis aureus), Porcupine (Hystrix indica), Nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus) and Striped Hyaena (Hyaena hyaena) were most widely distributed species with presence in a total of 286, 258, 204 and 224 polygons and cumulative area of occurence of 85062, 77313, 74152 and 64233 sq km respectively. Conversely, the rarest species in the State were Smooth-coated Otter (Lutrogale perspicillata), Red Giant Flying Squirrel (Petaurista petaurista) and Caracal (Caracal caracal) with presence in mearly 3, 4 and 7 polygons and cumulative area of occurrence of 488, 349 and 3474 sq km respectively. Though, Chinkara (Gazella bennettii) with their presence in 98 polygons and 35038 sq km of cumulative occurrence is comfortable, during field survey, the actual head count was only 327 from 99 localities. On the other hand, a total of only 16 Desert cat (Felis silvestris) were sighted from nine localities that had presence in 81 polygons and 25816 sq km of cumulative occurrence. In general if we intensively survey and plot their distribution at finer (1: 50000) scale, than carried out here, it will be revealed that prey and predator are mismatching in their distribution, that distribution of these species is decidedly very local and, that some of these populations are exposed to inbreeding.
