Deka Jyotish Ranjan, Lal Uttam, Sarma Pranjit Kumar
Department of Geography, Sikkim University, Sikkim, India, 737102.
Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 116 Russell Labs, 1630 Linden Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, USA.
Environ Monit Assess. 2025 Jul 8;197(8):880. doi: 10.1007/s10661-025-14302-0.
Urbanization affects wildlife species, particularly in wildland-urban interfaces. In the rapidly urbanizing landscape of Assam in India, we explored the relationship between urban expansion and wildlife conservation, focusing on the Indian leopard (Panthera pardus fusca). We assessed the land use and land cover changes, human-leopard interactions, and habitat suitability analysis of leopard. We also estimated the relative leopard abundance based on suitable patches within the free space in Guwahati using human building dataset. Our analysis shows that built-up areas have expanded from 6.23% in 1989 to 16.99% in 2019, while natural habitats vital for leopard have substantially reduced from 11.39 to 0.33%, respectively. Our survey in buffer zones around key forest areas indicates a growing trend in interactions, leading to a decrease in free space vital for leopard abundance. We estimated that Guwahati city can currently support 14 leopards (38-8 SD) within the existing landscape, but increased urban development could reduce this number to 4 (10-2 SD). Our study highlights the challenges of wildlife conservation in urban landscapes and the need for strategies that balance urban development with biodiversity protection. Our findings align with Target 4 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which emphasizes managing human-wildlife interactions to reduce conflicts and foster coexistence by 2030.
城市化影响野生动物物种，尤其是在城乡结合部。在印度阿萨姆邦快速城市化的景观中，我们探讨了城市扩张与野生动物保护之间的关系，重点关注印度豹（Panthera pardus fusca）。我们评估了土地利用和土地覆盖变化、人与豹的相互作用以及豹的栖息地适宜性分析。我们还利用人类建筑数据集，根据古瓦哈蒂市自由空间内的适宜斑块估计了豹的相对丰度。我们的分析表明，建成区面积从1989年的6.23%扩大到了2019年的16.99%，而对豹至关重要的自然栖息地则分别从11.39%大幅减少到了0.33%。我们在关键森林地区周边缓冲区的调查表明，相互作用呈增长趋势，导致对豹的丰度至关重要的自由空间减少。我们估计，古瓦哈蒂市目前在现有景观中可容纳14只豹（38 - 8标准差），但城市发展的增加可能会使这一数量减少到4只（10 - 2标准差）。我们的研究突出了城市景观中野生动物保护的挑战，以及需要制定平衡城市发展与生物多样性保护的策略。我们的研究结果与《昆明 - 蒙特利尔全球生物多样性框架》的目标4一致，该目标强调到2030年管理人与野生动物的相互作用，以减少冲突并促进共存。
