The Amur Falcon Success Story One particularly dramatic conservation success story took place in northeast India in 2013 More than 1 million Amur falcons use Doyand Reservoir in Nagaland as a stopover in fall on their way from eastern Siberia to East Africa In fall 2012 it was discovered that hunters had used nets to trap up to 100,000 of these birds of prey as they roosted The birds were then killed and smoked for sale as food Amur falcon is not endangered at present but if it suffers several years of trapping on this scale it will be The Indian partner of BirdLife International the Bombay Natural History Society worked with local people through schools and churches to explain how important their area was for the migrating falcons Friends of the Amur Falcon groups were set up in schools to get the conservation message across to children The strategy paid off in 2013 because not a single Amur falcon was trapped Now the challenge is to keep the campaign going development pollution and a warming of the world’s oceans as a result of climate change Elsewhere for example around sections of the Bay of Bengal mangrove forest borders the coast In India Sunderbans National Park in the Ganges Delta supports a population of tigers and there are also river terrapins Critically Endangered South Asian river dolphins Endangered and olive ridley turtles Vulnerable Pressure on the Land Most of the threats faced by animals in the region arise from a growing human population Sometimes these threats are direct for example with increased levels of hunting and fishing Usually however they are indirect More people need to be fed so more land is given over to agriculture and this often though it does not have to means wetlands are drained forests are cleared and grasslands plowed As the human population grows so does the need for more homes schools hospitals and roads all of which have to be built somewhere The animals that depend on reedbeds mature forest and open grassland lose areas in which to feed and raise their young and are concentrated into small areas Animals that need large home ranges simply cannot be squeezed into smaller areas so their population declines Even if a forest is not cleared if a road is driven into it predators find it easier to get into the forest’s heart and mammals and birds that cannot cope with disturbance suffer In some parts of the region people’s extreme poverty takes its toll on wildlife People without 6 electricity in their homes have to cut wood from forests to supply fuel for warmth and cooking People without ready access to protein from any other source are compelled to hunt whatever animals they can Until these issues are addressed there will always be a threat to wild animal populations Hunting is one problem that is usually driven by extreme poverty For example fishers along the coasts of Bangladesh and Myanmar use nets to catch feeding shorebirds for food They do not select which species to catch so Critically Endangered spoon-billed sandpipers are caught and killed alongside more common birds Agencies such as BirdLife International have started to work with fishing communities to persuade people to stop this practice As long as the people remain desperately poor however they could always return to bird netting out of desperation Forest understory is often removed by burning as here before the trees are felled to make way for agriculture or development
HABITATS THREATS AND CONSERVATION 7
EX EW CR EN VU NT LC O Asian Elephant Elephas maximus Asian elephants are valued as working animals so they will probably never become extinct However wild populations face serious threats T he Asian elephant is smaller than the African elephant Found across South and Southeast Asia the Asian elephant has already died out in the eastern and western ends of its former range There are a few hundred Asian elephants in the world’s zoos but few are bred in captivity Unlike their African cousins Asian elephants have for centuries been trained and used as draft working animals Today there are over 10,000 Asian elephants trained for heavy tasks Ironically they are used to help drag out felled trees from the forest the environment on which wild Asian elephants depend Huge areas of forest have already been cut down and losses continue all the time With the destruction of the forests remnant elephant populations get split into smaller groups that become isolated from each other In order to meet and breed it is often necessary to cross developed land with all the dangers that entails In a project in Indonesia some elephants that became isolated in this way were actively driven out to join with others in a larger area of habitat Elephants need a lot of space An individual’s home range is often up to 15 square miles 40 sq km and sometimes over 116 square miles 300 sq km in southern India The animals need to drink over 11 gallons 50 liters of water a day so it is essential that they live near rivers or lakes exactly the type of land that is considered ideal for agricultural use Replacing the forests with farmland gives the elephants little choice but to raid the new crops such as bananas and sugarcane As a result farmers are inclined to shoot and snare the elephants 8 A female Asian elephant and her calf Asian elephants live in small family groups of females and their young most males bulls live in bachelor herds There are about 27,000 elephants in India but only about 1,500 of them are adult tuskers animals with ivory tusks Elephants need to eat at least 300 lb 150 kg of plants every day Such quantities are only available naturally in the lush tropical forests Even in the fastest-growing forests the elephants need to move around in order to find sufficient food The animals migrate seasonally between different feeding areas to overcome food shortages during the dry season However such movements are now prevented by roads
ASIAN ELEPHANT DATA PANEL Asian elephant Indian elephant Elephas maximus Family Elephantidae World population At least 41,000 plus several thousand captive animals Distribution India east to China south to Vietnam and Indonesia Sri Lanka Habitat Tropical forest and grasslands Size Length head body 18 21 ft 5 5 6 4 m tail 4 5 ft 1 2 1 5 m height at shoulder 8 2 10 ft 2 5 3 m Weight females up to 6,000 lb 2,720 kg males up to 12,000 lb 5,400 kg Form Huge animal with long trunk columnlike legs Differs from African elephant in having a rounded back smaller ears and domed head Tusks often absent especially in females Diet Leaves grass and bark also soil to obtain minerals Breeding Single calf born at any time of year after gestation period of about 22 months Life span up to 80 years Related endangered species African elephant Loxodonta africana VU Status IUCN EN and farmland Even national parks may not be large enough to accommodate populations of elephants all year round so special dispersal corridors have been created to link areas of forest and enable elephants to migrate seasonally between them The Kallar Jaccanari corridor for example links the 4,000 elephants of the northern and southern Nilghiri Biosphere Reserve in southern India The corridors have to be about 8 miles 13 km wide Wasteful Killing Shooting and snaring for ivory have been a threat to the Asian elephant for centuries although the females do not have tusks and the males sometimes lack them The African elephant has always been under greater threat from hunting for tusks Trading in ivory is now forbidden under the CITES agreement Another threat to the Asian elephant is the millions of land mines left in the forests of Sri Lanka Cambodia Vietnam and other Asian countries during wars in the 20th century In Sri Lanka it is estimated that each year about 20 elephants die after stepping on land mines Others are crippled 9
