Data and Conservation of Himalayan Galliformes

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Data and Conservation of Himalayan Galliformes Data and Conservation of Himalayan Galliformes Thesis submitted to the School of Natural and Environment Sciences, Newcastle University in fulfilment for the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Garima Gupta May 2019 Abstract The Greater Himalaya is home to many sacred landscapes and source of the eight largest rivers of Asia and has three of the world’s 35 global biodiversity hotspots. The region has been identified as having a high number of threatened species which makes the Himalaya an area of high conservation concern. One key taxonomic group that is found throughout the Greater Himalaya and is thought to be of a particular concern is the bird Order Galliformes (gamebirds) which includes species of pheasant, partridges and quail. There are 24 species of Galliformes that are either endemic or near-endemic to the Greater Himalaya and are well recognized for their ecological, socio-cultural and economic values. Despite their ecological and conservation prominence, the group remains poorly known, making conservation decision making difficult. Therefore, I explore the availability and use of data in understanding and planning for the conservation of Himalayan Galliformes. I describe the database from which point locality data has been used in the research. I examine the detailed information held in the database and compare it with published syntheses of both altitude and geographic ranges used for conservation purposes. I show that altitude information from localities in the database allows much more focussed depiction of altitudinal ranges of species. I then determine the threats faced by the Himalayan Galliformes by undertaking a systematic literature review to identify the threats reported in the literature and the evidence supporting them. I show that hunting and habitat loss are the threats for the Galliformes but there is not enough evidence to prove that. I then show how the ecological life traits can be used to assess if there are any correlates between threat types and species life- history. I found that most of the Least Concern species inhabits open habitats at higher altitudes. Geographic ranges are a fundamental part of ecology and species conservation. Knowing where a species occurs is important as it allows conservationists to make an accurate assessment of threats for individual species. I show that our knowledge on Himalayan Galliformes species is good and that it has improved more rapidly than expected by chance by examining the pattern of accumulation of information on a species’ range over time and comparing this with a suitable simulated model. Finally, I show the dependency of the Himalayan Galliformes species on conservation actions by testing the IUCN Green List protocol to quantify the species recovery because of the conservation actions and legislation. I report all the challenges in assessing the Green List status of the species. i I conclude by discussing the generality of my findings and how they can be applied to other taxa and localities and finally making a series of recommendation for future conservation and research work in the Greater Himalaya. ii Dedication I dedicate this thesis to my grandfather, Shri Jagdish Prashad Gupta. RIP. iii iv Acknowledgements My journey towards this dissertation has been incredible and almost impossible without the contribution and support that I received from some people. I thank Newcastle University for awarding me with the “Newcastle University Overseas Research Scholarship”, which made this PhD thesis possible. I would like to thank a number of people who directly or indirectly helped me in achieving this milestone. My sincere thanks go to my supervisors Dr Philip McGowan, Dr Jonathon Dunn, and Dr Roy Sanderson. Dr Phil McGowan for your endless support in helping me in finishing my thesis. Thanks for motivating me and for always being concerned about my well-being. Dr Jonathon Dunn for your relentless efforts in helping me in learning R and ArcGIS. This thesis would not have finished in time without his monumental help. Dr Roy Sanderson for helping me with statistical analysis. Thanks also go to Prof Steve Rushton for reading my thesis and giving me his valuable & positive feedback. I would like to thank my M.Sc. supervisor, Prof Jyoti Kumar Sharma who always inspired me to pursue a doctoral research degree from abroad and helped me with application process. I would like to thank everyone in Modelling, Evidence and Policy research group. Many thanks to Rike, Kirsty, Louise, Cobain, Siti, Becca, Sienna, Ellen, Ibrahim, Eli and Laura for helping me in and out of my research problems. They all were a family away from home. Thanks to everyone in SNES Office in Ridley Building 2 for all their help and support. Special thanks to my parents for always believing in me and supporting me. None of this would have happened without their love and constant support. Thanks to my family and friends in Delhi, Dehradun, Amritsar, and USA for always motivating me. Thanks to my childhood friend Ashish for always being there for me and encouraging me to keep going even when I was failing in all my attempts. Thanks to my friend Anubhi, for being my only ‘Indian’ family in this country and helping me emotionally as well as financially. My experience in this country would not have been same without you. Collaborations Thanks go to following people for their significant contributions and help in achieving this milestone. Prof Richard Fuller, University of Queensland, Australia for discussions and reading v through a draft of my chapter four manuscript. Dr Molly Grace, Postdoctoral Researcher at Oxford University provided the proposed IUCN Green List of Species protocol (Chapter 5) advice and important information and read through the draft of my chapter. Dr Matthew Grainger, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research helped me with systematic literature review (Chapter 3) and provided insights about Galliformes. vi Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ i Dedication .................................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... v List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ xi List of Tables ........................................................................................................................... xiii List of Appendix ...................................................................................................................... xiv Chapter 1. General Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Global biodiversity in threat: a human induced crisis ..................................................... 1 1.2. Mass extinction: past, present, and future ........................................................................ 1 1.3. Sixth mass extinction: The dawn of the Anthropocene Era ............................................. 2 1.4. Convention of Biological Diversity and Aichi Targets: Response to the sixth mass extinction ................................................................................................................................ 4 1.5. Progress towards Aichi Target 12 .................................................................................... 6 1.6. Why is it important to have locality data in conservation science – setting species conservation goals? ................................................................................................................. 7 1.7. The Greater Himalaya: importance and threats ............................................................... 9 1.8. Galliformes: Himalayan species and threats to them ..................................................... 11 1.9. Aims of thesis ................................................................................................................ 12 1.10. Thesis outline ............................................................................................................... 12 Chapter 2. Understanding species occurrence data that underpins conservation decisions ..... 15 2.1. Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 15 2.2. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 15 2.3. Methods ......................................................................................................................... 17 2.3.1. Data extraction ........................................................................................................ 17 2.3.2. Size and content of the database ............................................................................. 18 2.3.3. Comparison of the observed elevation value extracted from point locality data with the elevation value extracted from the literature ............................................................... 19 2.3.4. Comparing BirdLife International range map with the range map created using point locality data .............................................................................................................
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