Language: English
Tigers have an inherent habit to move across landscapes. To facilitate such movement, corridors are essential. Lack of corridors connecting landscapes results in fatal human–tiger conflict, where, in most cases, it is the tiger which suffers. It has been proven that tiger population size is determined by the carrying capacity of tiger reserves. There is a great need for the connectivity of smaller populations of tigers with larger ones for their persistence into the future. The persistence of small populations with habitat corridors in a metapopulation framework is the best management option for conservation of tigers in the long term.
The population dynamics of tigers thus depends on the quality of good and poor habitats, known as source and sink dynamics. This book emphasises the need to evaluate and develop a mitigation strategy for maintaining metapopulation structures of tigers in priority landscapes. The green infrastructure concept factors the importance of the natural environment in land use planning. In the context of tiger landscapes in India, this will encompass a large number of tiger reserves, protected areas, and corridors which create a system of "hubs" and "links". Green infrastructure has to form the basic framework for ensuring tiger conservation and development in a tiger landscape spreading across multiple jurisdictions.