Need for structured conservation inputs: a geospatial approach for habitat prioritization to restrict disturbance regime in the protected areas of the Western Himalayan region

Abstract

AbstractThe population boom increases land-use requirements, and shrinking regions are available to preserve natural biodiversity. Unfortunately, scientific knowledge does not seem to have and might never get a correct solution to how much territory will be sufficient for satisfying the various biodiversity conservation goals. Prioritization of habitat, primarily for threatened species, is a critical management challenge. Habitat management efforts are gradually being performed over broader geographic regions, emphasizing the necessity of spatial and strategic prioritization. Habitat prioritization is a technique popular for identifying critical areas needing conservation initiatives. To develop a strategic conservation framework, key issues must be identified based on the ground knowledge and present land use status, which are difficult to gather for highly rough terrain areas. Incorporating spatial data sets thus helps to get the desired knowledge of the site on a large scale. This study used a grid-based multicriteria approach to create a spatial conservation management framework for the Rajaji-Corbett landscape (RCL) in Northern India. A grid-based prioritization assessment was conducted to identify priority areas for the RCL, keeping invasive species and fire as significant threats. The indicators or criteria were selected by looking at present vital concerns in the landscape. We took 20 indicators for our multicriteria assessment for landscape prioritization of RCL using 2 × 2 km grids for the evaluation and classified them according to low, medium, and high priority areas using Arc GIS Pro. The results identified 931 sq. km area of this landscape needs immediate management interventions where frequent fire incidents and presence of invasive species are high. RCL is well known for its biodiversity wealth and assemblage of various wildlife populations.