Introduction
Sal forest tortoise, also known as the elongated tortoise (indotestudo elongate) is one among 23 of the 29 of fresh-water turtle and tortoise, under the threatened category in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list. As per the IUCN, the population of the species may have fallen by about 80 per cent in the last 90 years. Though widely distributed over eastern and northern India and Southeast Asia, it is not common in any of this terrain. The sal forest tortoise is heavily hunted for food and collected both for local use and international wildlife trade. A study, conducted by ecologists in the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun in May 2020 gave various insights into the habitat and distribution of the sal forest tortoise.
Findings of The Study
(i) As per the study, the area designated as a protected area network has only a small overlap with the actual habitat it roams around in.
(ii) Over 90 per cent of the potential distribution of the species falls outside current protected area’s network.
(iii) In northeast India, the representation of the species in protected areas is least, and there is little to no connectivity among most of the protected areas where the species is present.
(iv) Some 29 per cent of the predicted distribution of the species falls within high occurrence fire zones, including Uttarakhand State, which is the ‘westernmost’ limit of the species.
(v) The species experiences Jhum fire, especially in northeast India, which is a suitable habitat for the species. Such incidents may not only directly kill the animals, but may open up habitats for people to find the tortoise easily.
Forest fires also affect soil moisture, adversely which may impact forest floor resulting in changing the whole community on which the reptiles depend.
Need for Conservation Effects
As tortoises are a threatened species their regular monitoring is the need of the hour. Tortoises select moist patches during summer, such as dry stream beds, which should be protected from forest fires. The study covers Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal, but transboundary research has not picked up in our country. For tigers, there are efforts like the ‘Tiger Conservation Unit’ and transboundary conservation reserves like Manas for the Indo-Bhutan region, and the Sundarban, for the India-Bangladesh region. Similar efforts are required for many other species, which are equally threatened globally.
There are many species like sal forest tortoise, which have very large distribution but are rare and over exploited throughout its range. Brakish water turtle, Batagur baska, found in India and Bangladesh, is one such species which are critically endangered.
As for population sizes, little information is available because sal forest tortoise or any such species are so rare and live in remote areas of the forest. This is compounded by the fact that there are few funding opportunities to study them. Consequently, species having large distribution face a plethora of problems. Moreover, protected areas are designated in a largely manual-centric way. Many reptiles and amphibians, which are threatened, live outside protected areas making them prone to exploitation.
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The IUCN Red List of Threatened species is the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species. With a set of quantitative criteria, the extinction risk of thousands of species is evaluated. The list is recognised as the most authoritative guide to the status of biological diversity due to its strong scientific base. As per the list, 31,000 species are threatened with extinction, i.e., 27 per cent of all assessed species. Of them, amphibians are 41 per cent; mammals, 25 per cent; conifers, 34 per cent; birds, 14 per cent; sharks and rays, 30 per cent; reef corals, 33 per cent; and selected crustaceans are 27 per cent. The IUCN unveiled the assessment system in 1994.
India became a State Member of IUCN in 1969, through the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). Currently, the list consists of more than 1,16,000 species.
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