Comparative study of birds and butterflies in protected forests and non-protected village habitats of West Bengal
Mode of Presentation: Poster
Conference Name: Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS 2011)
Year: 2011
Area: Entomofauna, Avifauna
Authors: Soumya Sarkar, Arjan Basu Roy, Silanjan Bhattacharyya
Abstract
Protected areas are kept free from human pressure. Wildlife is conserved within those patches, mostly in an undisturbed manner. However, wildlife is not just confined within such management demarcated areas. They are distributed outside the protected areas too. In many parts of Southern West Bengal, those small protected areas are adjoined by village based agro-ecosystem. They are managed and maintained by villagers. Wildlife do exist there. The villagers seem to have evolved traditional management activities in their eco-system that has allowed co-existence. Thus, we compare the biodiversity of small protected areas with village agro-ecosystems of the same region to measure the extent of isolations and integration in terms of species richness between two ecosystem. We have chosen birds and butterflies as our focal species. The species diversity and richness data revealed that both the habitats are important for the sustainability of birds and butterflies. Both ecosystem harbours good amount of unique residential and migratory birds. Though there was no unique butterflies found only in the village agro-ecosystem, but the overall number of species found there is quite significant.