Assessment of Corridor Viability and Habitat Restoration between Dudhwa National Park and Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary and its ManagementKheri District, Uttar Pradesh, India

 

Dr. Satya Priya Sinha, Project Coordinator

                                                                            And team  

INTRODUCTION

The terai is one of the worlds most spectacular landscapes, encompassing the tall grasslands and sal forests of the southern slopes and foothill valleys of the eastern Himalayas. This biologically diverse landscape spans as area of approximately 12.3 million acres (5 million hectares) from Nepal’s Bagmati River in the east to India’s Yamuna River in the west. The Terai is home of endangered wildlife such as the tiger, Greater One-horned rhino, Asian elephant, sloth bear, gaur and Gangetic river dolphin and also contains vital migratory and breeding habitat for over 500 bird species.

In fact, the Terai landscape is one of the last few places in the world where rhino, elephants and tigers coexist and offers exciting and urgent need for conservation. This landscape contains two Asian Rhino and Elephant Action Strategy (AREAS) priority populations of Greater Indian One horned Rhinos. In fact, terai landscape area supports the second largest population of Greater One-horned rhinos in the world along with three reintroduced rhino population.

            Fifty years ago, terai (In Sanskrit for “lowlands”) stretched across 1,600 kilometers of rich forests and tall grasslands. Since than, the exploitation and unsustainable management of forest resources has led to fragmentation and degradation of natural habitat. Approximately 3 million people, of which 50 percent subsist below the poverty line, live in this landscape and depend on its resources for their livelihood. In addition to the degradation of habitat, specific threats to the landscape, and to its rhinos, elephants, and tigers, include poaching and illegal wildlife trade, as well as human- wildlife conflict (WWF-Nepal Terai ARC).

Corridor plays an important role in management of landscape, by linking fragmented forest patches and provides accessibility to alternative habitat for long ranging animals. It also helps in maintaining gene flow as it is required to prevent inbreeding depression thus causing extinction (Harris, 1984). In recent years a number of wildlife habitats have under gone or are threatened with fragmentation due to various anthropogenic factors and this has actually affected large mammal population residing in them (Johnsingh et al 1990, 91).

 Dudhwa National Park and Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary are important habitat for large mammals like rhino, elephant, tiger, swamp deer and other wild animals found in the terai and bhabar range. Once these areas had abundant population of rhinoceros (Laurie, 1978), linked with each other, now has reintroduced and isolated populations. A number of rhinoceros have been reintroduced in recent past from Pobitara Wildlife Sanctuary, Assam and The Royal Chitwan National Park, Nepal to Dudhwa in India (Sale and Singh, 1987, Sinha and Sawarkar, 1993) and from the Royal Chitwan National Park to Royal Bardia National Park in Nepal (Barner, 1988, Mishra and Dinertein, 1987, Jnawali and Wegge, 1993) to establish new viable breeding populations and safeguard this species from various threats. The Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary has three rhinos dispersed from Royal Bardia National Park to Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary.