{"id":145,"date":"2014-09-11T03:08:32","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T03:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=145"},"modified":"2023-09-06T12:45:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T07:00:42","slug":"connecting-terrestrial-islands-to-promote-biological-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/connecting-terrestrial-islands-to-promote-biological-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecting Terrestrial \u2018Islands\u2019 to Promote Biological Diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>BY\u00a0Janita<\/span>\u00a0Gurung<\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0Pratikshya<\/span>\u00a0Kandel<\/span><\/p>\n

This year, the UN has declared \u2018Island Biodiversity\u2019 as the theme for celebrating International Day for Biological Diversity. The world\u2019s islands are home to about 600 million people \u2013 10 per cent of the world\u2019s population. These islands are also home to some unique species of plants and animals that are found nowhere else in the world. For example, the kangaroo is found only in Australia, the flightless kiwi bird is found only in New Zealand, and the now extinct dodo \u2013 another flightless bird \u2013 was found only in Mauritius. Australia, New Zealand and Mauritius are all island countries.<\/p>\n

\u2018Islands\u2019 \u2013 the word generally conjures images of areas of land surrounded by water. For conservationists, islands take on another meaning when pockets of pristine land areas rich in biodiversity exist amidst intensive areas of human settlements, agriculture, or industrialization. These \u2018islands\u2019 are generally home to numerous species of plants, birds, insects, and animals. At a larger scale, many of these ecologically significant islands have been set aside as areas to protect plants and wildlife.<\/p>\n

Animals, particularly large animals, must move, and thus require large areas of habitat for their survival. Often times when animals travel outside their \u2018islands\u2019 of protected areas, they enter human settlements and destroy crops, livestock, and even human life, resulting in what conservationists term \u2018human-wildlife conflicts\u2019. Humans generally respond to such wildlife intrusions by exterminating them through various means \u2013 a process termed as \u2018retaliatory killing.\u2019<\/p>\n

One of the methods by which the habitat of large animals can be increased is by connecting protected areas through wildlife \u2018corridors\u2019. These corridors can be instrumental in connecting fragmented habitat islands and thereby facilitate wildlife movement. Corridors also promote interbreeding which results in genetic diversity within the wildlife population.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Kangchenjunga<\/span>\u00a0Landscape is one of seven landscape initiatives in the Hindu\u00a0Kush<\/span>\u00a0Himalayas where the ecosystem approach is being used with a focus on connecting islands of protected areas through conservation corridors. This initiative is a\u00a0transboundary<\/span>programme<\/span>\u00a0involving the governments of Bhutan, India, and Nepal. The\u00a0programme<\/span>\u00a0aims to develop connectivity between the 20 isolated protected areas in the landscape through a network of conservation corridors extending from eastern Nepal, through the states of\u00a0Sikkim<\/span>\u00a0and northern West Bengal in India, to western Bhutan. These corridors will facilitate the movement of species such as the endangered snow leopard in the higher elevations, and Bengal tiger and Asian elephant at lower elevations.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Kangchenjunga<\/span>\u00a0Landscape is part of the Eastern\u00a0Himalaya<\/span>\u00a0\u2018Biodiversity Hotspot\u2019 where there is high biodiversity, much of which is facing severe threats from humans. The landscape hosts a significantly high number of plants and is home to at least six species of endangered animals including the snow leopard, Himalayan musk deer, Bengal tiger, Asian elephant, and one-horned rhino, among others. The trademark plant species of the landscape is the rhododendron \u2013 at least 45 species of which are found in the landscape. The landscape is also home to approximately seven million women and men, some of whom belong to distinct ethnic groups such as the\u00a0Lepchas<\/span>\u00a0and the\u00a0Walungs<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Despite the ecological significance of the\u00a0Kangchenjunga<\/span>\u00a0Landscape, there is much we need to know about the biodiversity andsocioeconomy<\/span>\u00a0of the region. During a recent review process for understanding the state of knowledge on biodiversity in the landscape, about 850 published and unpublished documents were recorded. The first recorded study in the landscape was conducted more than 170 years ago on the\u00a0Lepchas<\/span>\u00a0of\u00a0Sikkim<\/span>\u00a0by Archibald Campbell, the British political agent to\u00a0Sikkim<\/span>\u00a0and Darjeeling in the East India Company. This was followed by the work of the notable British naturalist Joseph Dalton Hooker, who published an account of his botanical expedition in the\u00a0Kangchenjunga<\/span>\u00a0region in two volumes of\u00a0The Himalayan Journals\u00a0<\/em>in 1854. Subsequently, research interest in the\u00a0Kangchenjunga<\/span>\u00a0landscape increased significantly only three decades later in the\u00a01980s<\/span>. Much of the information gathered in the area was focused on animals and plants, with the red panda being the most researched animal species in the landscape. Over 80 per cent of the research has been conducted in the Indian portion of the\u00a0Kangchenjunga<\/span>Landscape, only 9 per cent has been conducted in Nepal and just 4 per cent took place in the Bhutan portion of the landscape.<\/p>\n

Why is it important to know about the biodiversity in the\u00a0Kangchenjunga<\/span>\u00a0Landscape? There are an estimated 8.7 million species of organisms in the world. Among these, only 1.2 million species have been identified till date \u2013 representing only 14 per cent of the total biodiversity in the world. Accordingly, we have probably identified only a third of the total number of species in theKangchenjunga<\/span>\u00a0Landscape. Much of the gaps in our knowledge exist in relation to species other than plants and animals, i.e. on fish, amphibians, insects, fungi, and bacteria. Not much has been done to know the status of these relatively neglected life forms.<\/p>\n

Knowledge about biodiversity is crucial to understanding their roles in the ecosystem and therefore for their effective management. Biodiversity is a natural capital that provides a number of ecosystem services in the\u00a0Kangchenjunga<\/span>\u00a0Landscape, including providing food, timber, fiber and medicines \u2013 all things we depend on. It is also an important source of income for many local people living in the landscape. Therefore, gaining in-depth knowledge on biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions is extremely important for the wellbeing of the communities within the\u00a0Kangchenjunga<\/span>\u00a0Landscape, as well as for the global community.\n<\/p>\n

Janita<\/span>\u00a0Gurung<\/span>\u00a0(<\/em>janita.gurung@icimod.org<\/em>) is Biodiversity Conservation and Management Specialist and\u00a0Pratikshya<\/span>\u00a0Kandel<\/span>(<\/em>pratikshya.kandel@icimod.org<\/em>) is Research Associate \u2013 Biodiversity\u00a0<\/em>at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD<\/span>)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY\u00a0Janita\u00a0Gurung\u00a0and\u00a0Pratikshya\u00a0Kandel This year, the UN has declared \u2018Island Biodiversity\u2019 as the theme for celebrating International Day for Biological Diversity. The world\u2019s islands are home to about 600 million people \u2013 10 per cent of the world\u2019s population. These islands are also home to some unique species of plants and animals that are found nowhere else […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","ultp_layout_landscape_large":"","ultp_layout_landscape":"","ultp_layout_portrait":"","ultp_layout_square":"","newspaper-x-single-post":"","newspaper-x-recent-post-big":"","newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":"","web-stories-poster-portrait":"","web-stories-publisher-logo":"","web-stories-thumbnail":""},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"News<\/a>","tag_info":"News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}