Скачать или смотреть How Linear Infrastructure Affects Wildlife Habitats

Twenty-seven kilometres a day. We aren’t talking travel, but the pace at which roads are being built in India. Though the rate is the highest that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has achieved till date, its ‘ambitious target’ is 41 kilometres a day. India, truly is, on a road-building spree.

Of the current road network, approximately 24,000 kilometres cut through wildlife Protected Areas (PAs), injuring and killing wildlife indiscriminately. Over 1,200 passenger and freight trains run on railway lines – the length of which is yet to be measured – that slither across these prime wildlife habitats. These roads and railways have snuffed out 16 tigers in the last five years; over 150 elephants have been killed by speeding trains in the last eight years. In the past six months, 42 leopards have died on roads and railway lines throughout the country. In a short span of 63 days between December 2017 and February 2018, trains have killed 10 elephants in the state of Assam alone!

As roads, railways, canals and power lines continue to slice-up contiguous forests into smaller fragments, ‘linear intrusions’ is a buzzword in conservation that is here to stay. Linear infrastructure not only fragments wildlife habitats, but it also becomes a barrier to wildlife movement, isolating populations and impeding gene flow.

To conserve wildlife, especially large mammals like tigers and elephants, it is essential to not just conserve large areas but to also maintain connectivity between sub-populations. Reduced connectivity eventually leads to isolation of populations. Such populations run the risk of inbreeding, leading to reduced survival abilities and reproductive success.

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Filmed and Edited by - Deepti Murali