Legal instruments, partnerships needed for conserving wildlife corridors: WWF

Legal instruments and partnerships need to be in place to build a stronger framework for conserving and securing wildlife corridors and landscapes, a global wildlife body has said.

In a three-day workshop here experts from wildlife and environment organisations and officials from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change discussed the importance and challenges of maintaining and securing wildlife landscapes in an increasingly crowded space, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), India, said in a statement.

The workshop, which concluded yesterday, had representatives from the WWF, the ministry and the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department and organisations such as the Global Tiger Forum.

They assessed and identified locations of corridors in wildlife landscapes, the statement said.

The workshop went on to explore current approaches for monitoring connectivity, a corridor's structure and functionality, the application of contemporary modelling and genetic tools to design corridors for the future, and partnerships required to monitor the corridors, it said.

"In order to understand corridors and connected landscapes better, long-term corridor monitoring programmes including tools, techniques, innovations and large-scale monitoring frameworks were assessed," the statement stated.

It also said that the group also looked at ways of making monitoring of corridors more participative by involving local communities.

The statement said cases of corridor policy in Australia and Malaysia were also presented. These countries have sound policy frameworks that have helped integrate corridor management strategies, it said.

On the final day of the workshop, participants detailed out the key elements of a corridor conservation policy with discussions around key actions, processes, tools and legal instruments that need to be in place to help build a stronger framework for corridors, according to the WWF statement.

"Part of the discussions were on emerging fields in connectivity conservation such as climate change, and expansion in agriculture and commodities," it said.