16th Oct., 2018

NAGPUR: A latest study by three wildlife scientists has identified 567 types of barriers in 30 corridors in Central India landscape consisting of 3,84,508 sqkm spread across 16 protected areas (PAs) in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. It contains 16 PAs with a size of 87 sqkm to 3,188 sqkm.

Central India is a global-priority landscape for tiger conservation and contains about 31% of India’s tiger population. The study mapped these corridors and ranked them according to their restoration potential.

“We associated barriers with infrastructure to show where mitigation measures can be targeted. We mapped 567 barriers within 30 linkages in this landscape of which 265 barriers intersect with infrastructure and include 694km of roads, 150km of railway, 48 reservoirs, and 10 mines. Besides, 302 barriers are due to land-use or gaps in forest cover,” says lead author of the study Trishna Dutta, Department of Ecology, Evolution, & Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York.

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