Land Use Change and Wildlife Conservation—Case Analysis of LULC Change of Pench-Satpuda Wildlife Corridor in Madhya Pradesh, India

Sujoy Banerjee, Tuomo Kauranne and Mirja Mikkila
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Sujoy Banerjee: Forest Department, Wildlife (East), Government of Uttar Pradesh, Gonda 271001, Uttar Pradesh, India
Tuomo Kauranne: Oy Arbonaut Ltd., Kaislakatu 2, 80130 Joensuu, Finland
Mirja Mikkila: Department of Sustainability Sciences, LUT-University, Yliopistonkatu 34, 53580 Lappeenranta, Finland

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 12, 1-17

Abstract: To the burgeoning population, the tiger reserves of central India have been islanded by human habitation and are interconnected by narrow ‘wildlife corridors’ for migration of wildlife. Pench-Satpuda wildlife corridor is one such critical wildlife corridor that interconnects the Pench Tiger Reserve and Satpuda Tiger Reserve in central India. Land Use Land Cover (LULC) change of this corridor between April 2002 and April 2019 was analyzed using GIS and Remote Sensing Techniques. The study finds a systematic loss of 10,376.74 ha and 7406.24 ha of dense forests and open forests respectively, thus indicating large scale degradation of the area. The study found that a net area of 2054.60 of dense forests and open forests were diverted for agriculture indicating extensive encroachment of forest land. Water bodies have reduced by 25.41% indicating shrinkage in water bodies in the period under study. The presence of rich coal deposits in the wildlife corridor and operational coal mines in the near vicinity of the wildlife corridor is a matter of serious concern. This study attempts to highlight the importance of long-term sustenance of the Pench-Satpuda wildlife corridor for maintaining the genetic pool of wildlife in the landscape.

Keywords: habitat fragmentation; human-wildlife conflict; land use land cover analysis; Pench-Satpuda corridor; wildlife conservation; wildlife corridor; wildlife migration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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