Dynamics of northeast Indian mammalian community

Greater Himalayan Region is home to many charismatic and globally threatened species. Pakke Tiger Reserve (PTR) is located in this region in Arunachal Pradesh, India and it harbors many charismatic and/or lesser known species including tiger, leopard, clouded leopard, Asiatic golden cat, marbled cat, binturong and, Himalayan black bear. India is losing its biodiversity at an alarming rate due to high human population density and rapidly growing economy which requires rampant infrastructure development. This development comes at the cost of forested areas which are being transitioned for human use as local communities depend on forests for food, firewood and livestock grazing and rampant infrastructure and industrial development leads to habitat loss and fragmentation. Protected have been the cornerstone for conservation efforts in India, even though they constitute a mere 4% of Indian landscape.

India has achieved tremendous scientific progress in wildlife research in last two decades. Despite this baseline data about distribution of elusive and least studied species such as marbled cat, clouded leopard and binturong does not exist and this knowledge gap has remained outside of scientific purview. Lack of data becomes even more pressing due to increasing anthropogenic pressure on forested areas resulting in restriction of carnivore populations primarily to protected areas.

I am working with Pakke Tiger Reserve forest department, Wildlife Conservation Society, India,local communities,and University of Florida to understand species and communtiy level dynamics of carnivores. This project will provide information about important conservation questions like: which carnivore species are present? where they are? and what drives their distribution, interspecific interactions, and activity patterns in the PTR landscape? This project will be a piece in the larger landscape level trans-country connectivity.

For this project, I am employing multi-year camera-trap data set and will apply cutting edge statistical methods that account for imperfect detection to reliably quantify distribution patterns, their changes and identify drivers of species richness, species distribution and influence of anthropogenic disturbance on species persistence. This information will be used to inform forest management to ensure long term conservation of the vulnerable species.