Building roads within tiger corridors a matter of concern: Conservation expert

Development of roads within the tiger landscapes of India is a major cause of concern, wildlife conservation experts have warned.

“India already has the highest road density within tiger habitats. By 2050, road development within tiger landscapes in India is projected to increase by 14,000 km, several orders of magnitude higher than other tiger-bearing countries,” Dr Pranav Chanchani, National Lead for tiger conservation at the World Wide Fund for Nature-India said.

India’s population is projected to grow by nearly 300 million people between now and 2050, and pressure on land and corridors will only increase dramatically.

“Other research reveals that while tigers have the propensity to move through agriculture and plantations, roads with high traffic volume and dense settlements are significant barriers to movement,” said Dr Chanchani, whose portfolio includes designing and steering science, policy and program development initiatives and providing technical leadership for a team of about 25 biologists in six tiger conservation landscapes within India.

Roads are thought to have depressed numbers of tigers, other wildlife and their ungulate prey by as much as 20 per cent across the species' range, and adversely affected survival in some areas.

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“Projections from some recent studies suggest that under future scenarios of land use change and infrastructure development will drastically increase extinction probabilities of tigers in small and isolated habitat patches,” said Dr Chanchani, who holds a PhD in Ecology from Colorado State University, USA, and a master's in wildlife science from the Wildlife Institute of India.

Road and linear infrastructure is clearly a pressing development imperative, but it must not be a foregone conclusion that infrastructure development will come at the cost of wildlife habitats.

Reconsidering the location, width and other specifications of roads, such as realignment and building in appropriate mitigation measures can mitigate their impacts. While such measures and alternatives are considered, they are often afterthoughts, and sometimes viewed as costly excesses impeding development.

There is something to be hopeful about too. Growing evidence of the ability of tigers and other wildlife to move through agro-ecosystems suggests that ecological connectivity for some wildlife species can still be maintained in some landscapes where forested corridors are absent or degraded.

“But corridors in agriculture-forest mosaics will only remain permeable for wildlife movement if they are buffered from poorly-planned land use change, urbanization, mining, industrial development and accelerated road and highway development,” he added.