*"Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - Part I - 17. Mining in Goa : 17.4 Recommendations : Appendices : Appendix 3: Proposed ESZ1, and ESZ2 assignment of various Western Ghats talukas for which less than 50% area is within the Western Ghats boundary & Appendix 4 : Current Science Paper

Opinion
       13/10/2018
                1462.

Sub :-

*"Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - Part I - 17. Mining in Goa : 17.4 Recommendations : Appendices : Appendix 3: Proposed ESZ1, and ESZ2 assignment of various Western Ghats talukas for which less than 50% area is within the Western Ghats boundary  & Appendix 4 : Current Science Paper

Ref :-

Appendix 3: Proposed ESZ1, and ESZ2 assignment of various Western Ghats talukas for which less than 50% area is within the Western Ghats boundary  & Appendix 4 : Current Science Paper

Appendix 3: Proposed ESZ1, and ESZ2 assignment of various Western Ghats talukas for which less than 50% area is within the Western Ghats boundary :-

State District Talukas with areas assigned to ESZ1 Talukas with areas assigned to ESZ2

i. Dadra and Nagar Haveli  :- Dadra and Nagar Haveli Silvassa

ii. Gujarat :- Navsari Chikhli Surat Uchchhal, Vyara, Songadh Belgaum Gokak, Hukeri Mysore Mysore, Krishnarajanagara Hassan Hassan, Arsikere, Channarayapatna Shimoga Shikarpur Haveri Hangal Chitradurga Hosdurga, Holalkere Dharwad Kalghatgi Uttara Kannanda Haliyal Haliyal, Mundgod Belgaum Bail Hongal Davanagere Honnali, Channagiri Udupi Udupi Chamrajnagar Chamrajnagar

iii. Kerala :- Kottayam Changanacheri Ernakulam Perumbavur, Alwaye, Kotamangalam, Muvattupula Palakkad Palghat Palghat, Ottappalam Malappuram Perintalmanna, Tirur Kozhikode Kozhikode Quilandi, Kozhikode Kannur Talipparamba Kasaragod Kasaragod Thiruvananthapuram Trivandrum, Chirayinkil, Kollam Quilon

iv. Maharashtra :- Nashik Kalvan, Chandvad, Sinnar Chandvad, Sinnar, Satana Sindhudurg Kudal, Vaibhavwadi Sangli Shirala Atpadi, Kavathe Mahankal, Tasgaon, Vite Thane Bhiwandi Dhule Sakri Ratnagiri Dapoli, Guhagar Solapur Malsiras, Sangole Pune Rajgurunagar, n.a. ( 1612) Rajgurunagar, n.a. ( 1612), Shirur Kolhapur Kagal Ahmednagar Sangamner Sangamner, Ahmadnagar Satara Karad, Shirwal, Phaltan, Satara

Tamil Nadu :- See Appendix 2 footnote for list of talukas under the recent reorganization. These have not been assigned ESZ at this stage.

Appendix 4 : Current Science Paper :-

Mapping Ecologically Significant and Sensitive Areas of Western Ghats: Proposed Protocols and Methodology :

Madhav Gadgil1,2*, R J Ranjit Daniels3, K N Ganeshaiah4,5, S Narendra Prasd6, M S R Murthy7, C S Jha7, B R Ramesh8, K A Subramanian9

Abstract : -

One of the objectives assigned for the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, GOI, was to identify the Ecologically Sensitive Areas (ESAs) along Western Ghats, and thence to suggest regulatory procedures to conserve them. However the panel came to realize that globally there is no consensus either on the criteria to define ESAs or, on an adaptable methodology to identify them. Therefore defining and developing a methodology became an important first step before the panel could map the ESAs. This paper reports the outcome of a series of discussions and consultations held by the panel for a consensus on defining and mapping ESAs. The purpose of this paper is two folded: first, to invoke discussion and suggestions from a wider section of experts, on the conceptual and methodological details arrived at by the WGEEP; second to promote the methodology as a generic procedure for mapping ESAs in other significant bio-rich areas within and outside the country.
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1 Agharakar Research Institute, G G Agarkar Road, Pune 411004 and
2 Chairman, Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel
3 Care Earth Trust, No 5, 21st Street, Thillaiganganagar, Chennai 600 061
4 School of Ecology and Conservation and Department of Forestry and Environment Sciences, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK Bengaluru, 560065 and 5 Member, Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel.
6 Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, Deccan Regional station, Tarnaka,Hyderabad,500017
7 National Remote Sensing Centre, ISRO, Balanagar, Hyderabad, 560625
8 Institute Francies De Pondicherry, 1st Louies Street, PB 33 Pondicherry 605 002
9 Zoological Survey of IndiaI, Pune.
* Author for Correspondence
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Ecologically Sensitive Area (ESA) is a concept more easily perceived than perhaps defined. Just as the term `biodiversity’, ESA is among the most widely used terms with no unequivocally accepted definition. In fact ESA is often referred synonymous to, Environmentally Sensitive Areas1-5, Environmentally Sensitive Zones6, Ecologically Sensitive Ecosystem7, Ecologically Sensitive Sites8 etc., depending upon the context and the area or location that is being referred to, for conservation. In most of these situations the terms used are without any specific definition or with variable meanings (see table 1 ). And for the same reason it is possible only to enlist a set of criteria that characterise the ESAs, all of which, though, may not be applicable to all the situations. One such criterion is that ESAs are expected to have least resilience to disturbance and hence are difficult to be recovered or restored if perturbed by external influences.

Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP), set up by the Ministry of Environment of Forestry, GOI was assigned the task identifying such sensitive areas. However, the panel found that world over a number of features are being used for identifying the ESAs in different contexts. In fact some of these refer more to the significance of the area- either ecological, or economical, than merely to its resilience (table 1). Given the fact that the eventual purpose of identifying ESAs is to ensure conservation of sites that are important, it is perhaps imperative to consider features that define the ecological and economic values as well along with the resilience of an area while identifying the ESAs. Therefore, following a country-wide consultancy among the experts and the interested stake holders, WGEEP attempted to re-evaluate the concept of ESAs, redefine the concept if possible and develop a consensus protocol for mapping the ESAs along Western Ghats. In this paper we outline the conceptual basis and details of protocols arrived at, through a series of discussions by the WGEEP for mapping the ESAs for Western Ghats. We hope that a generalized form of these protocols could be used for other biorich areas as well within and outside the country.

A working definition of ESA : -

While there does not exist an unequivocally accepted definition, McMillan Dictionary9 defines environmentally sensitive area as an area where the natural environment can easily be harmed. Accordingly, for the present purpose though, it may be convenient to define Ecologically Sensitive Areas as those ecological units that may be easily affected or harmed, we wish to refrain from offering a specific definition. Nevertheless, for operational purposes, we wish to refer to ESAs as those areas that are ecologically and economically very important, but, vulnerable to even mild disturbances and hence demand conservation. We refer to `ecologically and economically important’ areas as those that are biologically and ecologically `rich’ `valuable’ and, or `unique’ and are hence irreplaceable if destroyed. Further, by the virtue of them being biologically rich, they could be potentially of high value to the human societies, help in maintaining the ecological stability of the area, and important in conserving biological diversity. Similarly, their `uniqueness’ may be recognised either by the rarity of the living systems they harbour that are difficult to replace if lost, or by the uniqueness of the services they offer to human society. Their `vulnerability’ could be determined by their physiographic features that are prone to erosion or degradation under human and other influences such as erratic climate. Several earlier attempts to define ESAs have also suggested these components as important (see table 1) directly or indirectly.

Do we need a different Terminology?

Clearly, as being practiced or being suggested world over for demarcating them, ESAs are not merely sensitive areas but are also Ecologically Significant Areas. They are significant for their biological value, ecological value, economic value, cultural and historical (both biological and anthropological) values and also significant because they are sensitive to external and natural pressures. Therefore they need to be conserved though with graded levels of protection depending upon their intrinsic value and extent of resilience. In other words there appears to be a consensus, at least in practice and by suggestions, that the ESAs shall not be merely ecologically sensitive areas but are also biologically and ecologically significant areas. Given the fact that Ecological Significance is a much wider and more inclusive term than the specific Ecological Sensitivity, we propose to use the term Ecologically Significant Areas in lieu of Ecologically Sensitive Areas (but retain the abbreviation as ESA). Thus in the ensuing pages we use ESAs in this sense and not to refer merely to ecologically sensitive areas.

Why ESAs?

In India, there are a good set of conservation sites such as biosphere reserves, national parks and wild-life sanctuaries that constitute an effective network of protected areas for conserving biological diversity and natural habitats10,11 . All these are large forested areas identified for conservation because they harbour high levels of biological diversity or, flagship species or, unique landscape elements. However excepting in certain cases such as the handful of bio-sphere reserves, the demarcation of the areas for these conservation programs was not based on any scientific data or on a large scale consultation involving diverse stake holders. Rather, more often they have been identified either on the basis of the wisdom of the forest managers and, or, on the basis of a historical contingents (eg., the royal hunting grounds, historically known places for certain species such as lions, buffers of reservoirs etc.,). Nevertheless the demarcated areas have been remarkably effective in attaining the goals of the conservation programs in the post independent period10,11 notwithstanding the repeated conflicts emerging between the native residents and the managers in several areas, and, distinct lacunae identified in some areas for effective conservation of the focal species (such as the lack of most essential corridors between certain PAs for large animals such as elephants12 etc.,

Against the background of such effectiveness of the existing network of conservations sites, an obvious question would be why do we need ESAs? While the existing network of conservation sites have been wonderfully effective, there are several unforeseen consequences as given below, that have biased our emphasis, and our attitude in the conservation efforts. We opine that these biases could be corrected by extending the existing conservation networks and we argue that the approach taken through ESAs could address such problems and complement the existing programs.

Asymmetry in conservation efforts: While national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and biosphere reserves are important and effective in conservation, their establishment has led to a complacency in our attitude towards other un-recognised but equally important areas. A host of unique habitats13 (such a Myristica swamps, floral plateaus of north Western Ghats, sholas of high altitude), lesser charismatic species (such as the endangered plants, lesser visible but threatened insects etc.,) and newly emerging hotter -spots (eg., `hot-specks’ such as certain water bodies with unusually high concentration of diversity, water seepages that teem with insect, plant and other animal life but are vulnerable to desiccation etc., as suggested by Dr P T Cherian; personal comunication ) are lacking the required attention from the existing conservation programs. Identification of such unique habitats and micro-niches of species require special efforts and the approach of ESA would at least partly address this problem.

The neglect of small and beautiful: There are a number of smaller units of the wilderness, that are significant for their historical, cultural and social relevance and hence deserve to be conserved (example limestone outcrops at Yana in Karnataka). Unfortunately, they can not be conserved via the existing network of conservation sites because they are smaller in size, or biologically poor or lack of charismatic wildlife etc., There are of course new conservation approaches emerging such as the identification of biodiversity heritage sites, conservation reserves etc., For instance, as per the provision provided in Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 even small areas such as tree groves, traditionally venerated by local human communities can be conserved; there are also instances of such efforts as for example of the kind established by the TN Forest Department along the banks of the Tambaraparani river close to KMTR in Tirunelveli. However The ESA-approach proposed here attempts to encompass all these along with a host of areas of conservation interest that are otherwise neglected.

Non-valuation of invisible services: There are several areas that do not fall under the existing network of conservation, but offer a range of tangible and often invisible services to the communities. These services that have generally gone unnoticed require immediate conservation. For instance, vast areas of grass lands, not so rich in biodiversity could be serving as catchment areas for important rivers that provide agricultural- and food- stability to people far off in the downstream. A small patch of land in the form of sacred grove could be offering the most important medicinal plants used regularly by the communities depending on it. Areas that provide such invisible services may be important for locals communities dependent on them and hence could be considered as important components of ecologically significant areas.

Need for variable management strategies: Protected Area networks are rigid with respect to their management and the local dependents have least role in utilizing, managing and conserving them. Considering the formidable costs involved in expanding the PA network and the general lack of wilderness outside the domain of human societies it would be more practical to think of alternate ways of a variable management system. Several of the areas of conservation significance may be managed by variable regulations with a consensus on its utilization and sustenance/management. In other words we need a network of conservation sites that have variable and perhaps even flexible management strategies. As would be shown below ESAs can be identified with such flexible system of management. In fact there could be ESAs with PAs embedded within them with an adaptive regime of regulation.

Thus there is a need to expand the scope of the existing process of identifying the areas for conservation. Ecologically Significant Areas (ESAs) as proposed here aim at attaining this much more comprehensively than focusing merely on the biodiversity richness, or on ecologically sensitive areas. It takes a more general complementary (than being competing) approach for identifying conservation sites.

Demarcating the ESAs

A. Criteria for Demarcating ESAs

As discussed above, there are three important attributes that need to be considered in defining the ecological significance or sensitivity of an area: the physico-climatic features (geo-climatic features), the biological features and the social relevance (including their cultural, economic and historical importance) of the area. All these can be grouped under a) abiotic attributes, b) biotic attributes and c) anthropological or socio-cultural attributes. Such attributes are suggested and used by other workers also4 . But as yet we do not find any structured protocol for using these attributes to arrive at ESAs. We propose below a set of these attributes with the criteria to be used for each of them and then provide a methodological process to combine and use these criteria in demarcating ESA especially for a large area such as Western Ghats.

1. Biological attributes: We propose that demarcation of an ESA shall consider the following components of biological and cultural uniqueness and richness : -

a. Biodiversity richness: Richness in diversity at all taxonomic groups and hierarchies.
b. Species Rarity- Rarity of population size, distribution and also rarity in taxonomic representation.
c. Habitat Richness: Spatial heterogeneity of Landscape elements
d. Productivity: Total biomass productivity
e. Estimate of biological/ecological resilience: Representation of the plesio-vegetation
f. Cultural and Historical Significance: Evolutionary- historical value and cultural-historical value of the area

2. Geo-climatic layers attributes: These include the range of layers that assess the innate or natural vulnerability of the area. Obviously features such as slope, aspect, altitude, precipitation etc shall be used under the following two component attributes : -

a. Topographic Features: Slope, altitude, aspect etc.,
b. Climatic Features: Precipitation, number of wet days etc.,.
c. Hazard vulnerability: Natural hazards such as landslides and fires.

3. Stake Holders Valuation: It is important to invite the opinion of the public and local bodies especially the Zilla Panchayats, village level political bodies and also other civil societies to enlist the areas that they feel ecologically and environmentally sensitive and use these as important attributes.

B. Methodology to demarcate ESAs

i. Grid the study area: Most often ESAs are discussed and debated with a focus on individual landscape elements, specific sites, localities, and habitats. This has obviously bought in a lot of ad-hocism in to the process of recognising the ESA. But we propose that an exercise to identify ESAs is preferably taken up for a vast area (landscapes) using a common set of criteria and by adopting a uniform, replicable methodology. Accordingly, we propose here one such protocol for mapping ESAs of the Western-Ghats (Figure 1). However the methodology proposed here can be generalized for other similar bio-rich areas as well.

ii. Since it is difficult to decide in advance the exact size of the ESAs, we propose that the area in question could be divided in to grids of suitable size, depending upon the datasets available and vastness of the area. In case of Western Ghats we propose a 5’ X 5’ grids because most of the data sets available complement well at this scale .

iii. Valuing Grids for their ecological sensitivity: Data and information could be obtained for the entire Western Ghats on each of the criterion listed and maps depicting the three attributes are developed as below : -

1. Biological and cultural Layer:
a. Species Biological Richness: Areas that harbour high levels of biological diversity shall be considered as important ESAs than those that are less diverse and the diversity could be measured preferably using the Avalanche Index14,15 that integrates diversity at all levels of taxonomic hierarchy. Further in this particular situation, these values could to be normalized from the lowest (1) to the highest (10) values of biological diversity and each grid shall then be attached with the normalized value corresponding to its level of biodiversity.
b. Rarity of species : -

i. Distributional Rarity: Areas that contain the rarest of the species are to be considered more important because the loss of these species is irreversible. For this, the rarity of each species needs to be defined quantitatively as the proportion of the total grids occupied by it (Pi) and for each grid these rarity values are summed over all the species in that grid. Accordingly, the rarity of species can range from 1/ N for those that occur in only one of the total N grids to 1.00 for those that occur in all the grids. These rarity values of the species are then summed over all the species (S) for each grid to arrive at a Rarity Value for each grid. It is important to consider only the naturalized species to avoid the recently introduced invaders. The Rarity Value of a grid (RVg) is given by
S
RVg = Σ (Pi)
i = 1
Further these RVg values shall be normalized again from 1 (lowest ) to 10 (highest) and assigned to the grids. Such quantification is fortunately possible now owing to the datasets accumulated on the distribution of species for several bio-rich areas.

ii. Taxonomic rarity: Using the taxonomic hierarchy from the datasets available16 taxonomically (and hence probably evolutionarily) rare species shall be identified as the families that contain only one monotypic genus. Such families are counted for each grid and normalized between 1 to 10.

c. Habitat Richness: Habitat heterogeneity is well known to be correlated to the diversity of a range of organisms especially of animals including aquatic fishes17,18. Therefore, in the absence of data on a wide range of animals, we propose that grids that contain high levels of habitat heterogeneity or landscape heterogeneity shall be regarded as biologically rich and hence as ESAs. Habitat heterogeneity is possible to be quantified for large areas such as Western Ghats as fine resolution remote sense data sets are now available. The habitat richness of a grid (HRg)can be computed using Simpson Index where the species are replaced by the landscape types and the frequency of the species by the proportion of the area occupied by the landscape types as given below : -
L
HRg = Σ (Pi)^2
i = 1

where Pi is the proportion of the area of the ith landscape element and L, the number of elements in the grid.

These values are then normalized from 1 to 10 and assigned to grids.

d. Productivity : It has been demonstrated that productivity of an area, as represented by the cumulative greenness or NDVI over the year is a good surrogate for the vegetation diversity19,20. Since this index captures the extent primary productivity that sustains life, it can also be used as a surrogate for diversity of a host of organisms for which data sets are not available. Here again the cumulative NDVI over the year is attached for each grid and normalized to range from 1 to 10. We understand that this parameter may underestimate the importance of certain habitats such as grass lands, and overestimate for others such as evergreen forests, we also realize that there are a number of possible ways of using NDVI to circumvent these biases. But given that we have other attributes that capture the importance of such habitats, we wish to restrict to the cumulative values of NDVI as it does represent the base productivity for the life to sustain.

e. Estimate of biological /ecological resilience: The extent of deviations in the biological composition (plant composition) of an area from its original plesio-climax composition would reflect the resilience of the system over large time scale; those that have deviated more from the original composition can be considered to be least resilient and hence are ecologically highly sensitive. For this we propose to estimate the proportion of the existing vegetation that reflects the plesio-climax as an index of resilience21,22 . These proportions are assigned to all the grids and then normalized to range from 1 (highest deviations) to 10 (least deviations).

f. Cultural Significance: Areas that harbour historical relics and cultural diversity also shall be considered important as ESAs. While there is no easy way to value the cultural significance, we suggest that the oldest of the relics shall get the highest value (10) and the most recent the low value (1); if there are no relics the grid gets zero value.

2. Geo-climatic layers : -

a. Topographic Features: Areas with steep slopes and high altitudes are likely to be eroded more easily, and hence vulnerable to natural erosion. Obviously such areas need to be considered as least resilient and hence environmentally sensitive zones areas. We suggest that the slopes, and altitudes can be normalized within each grid from 1 (least average slope or lowest average altitude) to 10 (high slope and high altitude) and assigned to the grids (see Figure 2 and 3 as examples).

b. Climatic Features: Areas with high rain fall, and with a narrow window of wet or rainy season (actual length of dry season or number of rainy days in conjunction with total annual precipitation; rainfall in excess of 3000mm and dry season that exceeds 6 months have made landscapes the most vulnerable/least resilient; Pascal, 1988) are most vulnerable of erosion and hence needs to be considered environmentally sensitive. Accordingly these are normalized within each from 1 (low rain fall or highest number of rainy days) to 10 (highest rain fall or least number of rainy days) and assigned to grids.

c. Hazard vulnerability: Available data on natural hazards such as avalanches and fires shall be obtained wherever possible and attached to the grids, and normalized from 1 to 10.

3. Stake Holders Valuation: WGEEP has been having local consultations, public hearing and is also getting responses from wide section of civil societies (through the website www.westernghstsindia.org) for their inputs on the ESAs. Similar opinions shall be invited from public and local bodies. Too often these would not be having the exact boundaries and hence they would be assigned to grids. These area then normalized from 1 to 10.

Grading the ESAs : -

There could be no immediate consensus on how to weigh each of these attributes but one simple way (but obviously un acceptable to all) would be to weigh the three criteria (Abiotic, Biotic and Socio-cultural) equally. We wish to continue such a process with the hope that once the results are out, there could be further discussions, re-valuation and revision of the ESAs. However for the time being we propose that all the three attributes viz., biological, geo-climatic and public perception are developed and graded as given in the table -1 below. Each of them is divided into three categories based on the importance of the biological component, environmental sensitivity and valuation by the public and are ranked accordingly. These attributes are later overlaid as shown in table 2. The biological and geo-climatic layers are first combined and the public perception layer is overlaid on this to arrive at the different grades of ESAs (see table 2).

Once the grids are assigned with these grades/ranks, areas for demarcating ESAs are identified as set of consecutive grids with similar grading/ranking. However the more fine scale borders of the ESAs can be developed with local inputs from the forest managers and the stake holders before they are legally declared as ESAs.

Conclusions : -

We are aware that the protocol and methodology provided here for mapping ESAs can not be final and may not be directly adaptable without further discussions. However it is our hope that responses from a wider section of experts and the consequent discussions help significantly towards developing a more generic methodology on which there could be more consensus. In the meanwhile, however WGEEP has been compiling the datasets required for the purpose for mapping the ESAs along Western Ghats using these steps. Any constructive suggestions during the process would be highly appreciated.

Acknowledgments: We thank all the members of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, especially Drs R. Sukumar, Ligia Noronha and Rene Borges for their inputs and suggestion at different stages of the development of this MS. We also thank Ministry of Environment and Forestry, for funding this work. In particular we thank Dr G V Subramanyan for his help and cooperation in organizing the discussions. Our thanks are also due to staff of ATREE, FERAL and French Institute for their suggestions and inputs. Miss Asha working for her Ph D at SEC, UAS Bengaluru on ESAs and Narayani Barve from Kansas State University have been of special help in preparing the maps.

NEXT : Table 2. Suggested methodology to categorise and valuing the attribute layers

To be continued ..

JAIHIND
VANDEMATHARAM