• Flagship species including tiger, one-horned rhino and snow leopard are among animals whose habitats have already been mapped

Kathmandu, May 11

The mapping of the habitats of 20 of the 208 mammals red-listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature has been completed so far.

The habitat mapping project was begun in December of 2016 by IUCN in collaboration with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation; Walter Jetz; Yale University, United States; the Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University; and the Kathmandu Living Labs.

According to Climate Specialist and Natural Resources Management Specialist of IUCN Nepal Deep Narayan Shah, the mapping of the habitats of 20 red-listed mammals has been completed so far. “Flagship species including the tiger, the one-horned rhino, and the snow leopard, among others, have been covered in the mapping. Habitat mapping of the remaining animals will be completed by November of 2018,” Shah told The Himalayan Times.

The project ‘JaibikMap: Nepal’s Biodiversity and Climate Change Tool for Future’ aims to design and create an interactive, open data, free web-based mapping tool that contains detailed data of mammalian species in order to address conservation and development challenges, to conduct a nation-wide study of forest change under different climate change scenarios, and to apply the findings to species distribution models that can predict shifts in the habitats of these mammals based on season, climate change, or other external and internal factors.

Similarly, the project aims to develop a mobile application that will allow any user to upload photos and GPS coordinates to the JaibikMap repository taken during opportunistic sightings of mammal species.

According to the project, its output will help establish a visual representation of the abundance of mammalian species, their status and distribution, and the habitat requirements for all 208 mammal species occurring in Nepal; and overlay this data against location/distribution of existing land use and habitat, settlements and roads.

Similarly, the project will find out model changes in Nepal’s forest cover, composition, and distribution in light of various future climate change scenarios to conduct innovative species distribution modelling based on the results, and build capacity at all levels for the model’s uptake and general conservation.

A total of 208 species of mammals are found in Nepal, constituting 4.2 per cent of the world’s mammalian fauna. Nepal’s faunal diversity ranges from the second largest terrestrial mammal, the Asian Elephant (Elephasmaximus) to one of the world’s smallest mammals, the white-toothed pygmy shrew (Suncus etruscus).

Nepal also is home to the largest of the cats, the Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris), and the smallest deer, the Indian Spotted Chevrotain (Moschiola indica). Much of the biodiversity in the country has been conserved through the establishment of the protected area system, which covers nearly 25 per cent of the country’s land mass and

represents diverse ecosystems at various elevations.

However, ecosystems and biodiversity outside the protected areas suffer the greatest threat, primarily due to encroachment of forest lands, overgrazing, over-exploitation of forest resources, and poaching of wildlife species.

Deterioration of the quality of the wildlife habitats, both inside and outside protected areas, due to invasive alien plant species such as the Mikania micrantha, the Chromolaena odorata, the and Lantana camara has only exacerbated the threats.