Optimal distance to escape terrain of bharal in presence of livestock in Greater Himalayan alpine rangelands

• Published in: Tropical ecology 2023-09, Vol.64 (3), p.571-577
• Main Authors: Bhattacharya, Ankita, Chatterjee, Nilanjan, Rawat, Gopal Singh, Habib, Bilal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Availability; Biodiversity; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Cliffs; Conservation Biology/Ecology; Ecology; Ecosystems; Forage; Habitats; Interspecific relationships; Landscape Ecology; Life Sciences; Livestock; Mountains; Pasture; Predation; Pseudois nayaur; Rangelands; Short Communications; Spatial analysis; Terrain; Ungulates
• ISSN: 0564-3295; 2661-8982
• DOI: 10.1007/s42965-022-00278-2

Escape terrain is an integral component in species ecology for survival and predation avoidance, alongside other factors. For mountain ungulates, escape terrains are steep cliffs serving as refuge in case of predation or other disturbances. Mountain ungulates can exploit their habitat safely within certain distance from these escape terrains. This distance to escape terrain depends on topography, availability/distribution of nutritious forage and nature and extent of interspecific interactions in different montane habitats. Alpine pastures of the Greater Himalaya are shared by mountain ungulates as well as pastoralists who migrate to graze their livestock in summer-monsoon season. In such habitats, nutritious grasses are often distributed in patches, far away from cliffs. In presence of livestock, mountain ungulates have to tradeoff between food acquisition and avoiding predation, competition and disturbance by maintaining an optimal distance between their escape terrain and available forage. In this regard, we estimated optimal distance to escape terrain which bharal ( Pseudois nayaur ) maintains in alpine areas of Greater Himalaya. Spatial analysis was carried out with observation data and considering slopes above 45 degrees as cliffs, providing appropriate cover in our study area. The results revealed bharal maintained optimal distance till 795.2 m from cliffs during livestock presence. This contrasts with Trans Himalayan habitat where bharal tend to remain closer to cliffs as nutritional forage is more evenly distributed here compared to cis-Himalayas. Such crucial information on topographic factors affecting bharal ecology with respect to livestock can help in strategizing management decision and species monitoring in Greater Himalayan landscapes.