Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 January 2023 | 15(1): 22501–22504
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.8230.15.1.22501-22504
#8230 | Received 13 October 2022 | Final
received 22 December 2022 | Finally accepted 30 December 2022
Status of Swamp Deer
Rucervus duvaucelii duvaucelii (G. Cuvier, 1823) in grassland-wetland
habitats in Dudhwa Tiger Reserve, India
Sankarshan Rastogi 1,
Ashish Bista 2, Sanjay Kumar Pathak 3,
Pranav Chanchani 4 & Mudit Gupta
5
1,2,4,5 Wildlife and Habitats
Division, World Wide Fund for Nature-India, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003,
India.
3 Dudhwa Tiger Reserve, Lakhimpur Kheri,
Uttar Pradesh 262701, India.
1 srastogi@wwfindia.net
(corresponding author), 2 abista@wwfindia.net, 3 spathakifs@gmail.com,
4 pranav@wwfindia.net, 5 mgupta@wwfindia.net
Editor: L.A.K. Singh,
Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. Date
of publication: 26 January 2023 (online & print)
Citation: Rastogi, S., A. Bista, S.K. Pathak, P. Chanchani
& M. Gupta (2023). Status of Swamp Deer Rucervus
duvaucelii duvaucelii (G.
Cuvier, 1823) in grassland-wetland habitats in Dudhwa
Tiger Reserve, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 15(1): 22501–22504. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.8230.15.1.22501-22504
Copyright: © Rastogi et al. 2023. Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and
distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to the
author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: World Wide fund for Nature-India.
Competing interests: The authors
declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: We would like to
thank the PCCF(Wildlife)/CWW, Uttar Pradesh for the timely grant of the
research permits. We extend our sincere thanks to Dudhwa
Tiger Reserve administration for their constant support. At WWF-India, we would
like to thank Mr. Ravi Singh, Dr. Sejal
Worah, Dr. Dipankar Ghose, Mr. Yash Shethia, Mr.
Saurav De, and Dr. Anil Kumar Singh for their
constant guidance and support throughout the project. We also acknowledge the
support of WWF-India’s TAL-UP team and our field collaborators, Mr. Ram Kumar
Raj and Mr. Mahendra Singh for their help in data
collection.
Abstract: Swamp Deer is an
endemic species of the Indian subcontinent, mainly inhabiting tall grasslands
in river floodplains. Populations of the northern subspecies (Rucervus duvaucelii duvaucelii), restricted to the Terai
regions of northern India and western Nepal, have undergone dramatic declines
over the past two─three decades. In this
communication, we present results from systematic population counts conducted
in Dudhwa Tiger Reserve between 2021─2022. These
counts were conducted at 11 sites, each with two─three
independent observers. The exercises covered summer, monsoon, post-monsoon, and
winter seasons. We found the largest congregations of Swamp Deer in June during
the summer and February in winter. In the monsoon months of July─September
the Swamp Deer tend to use Sal woodlands along with farmlands adjoining the
reserve edge. This is part of an ongoing research project on long-term
monitoring and conservation of the threatened alluvial grasslands of the
central Terai in Uttar Pradesh, India.
Institutionalizing these monitoring practices for frontline forest staff is
essential for understanding long-term population dynamics of the threatened
Swamp Deer to develop conservation protocols for grasslands and their fauna.
Keywords: Alluvial grasslands,
population ecology, long-term monitoring.
In the fertile low
lying marshy interspersion of woodlands, grasslands, and wetland region of the
Himalayan foothills popularly termed as ‘Terai’ (Dinerstein 1979), alluvial floodplain grasslands have
largely been transformed to productive agricultural land where sugarcane,
wheat, and rice are cultivated. This has in turn led to decline in populations
of grassland obligate herbivores like One-horned Rhinoceros Rhinoceros
unicornis, Hog Deer Axis porcinus,
Hispid Hare Caprolagus hispidus,
and Swamp Deer among others (Dinerstein 2003; Strahorn 2009).
Swamp deer are
endemic to Indian subcontinent, with present distribution restricted to select
regions of India and Nepal, while the species is reportedly extinct from
Pakistan and Bangladesh (Duckworth et al. 2015). There are three distinct
subspecies of Indian Swamp Deer: the northern R. d. duvaucelii,
the central Indian R. d. branderi, and
northeastern R. d. ranjitsinhi (Schaller
1967). Of these, the distribution of R. d. duvaucelii
is relatively wide, spanning the states of Uttar Pradesh & Uttarakhand in
India, and the western Terai in Nepal.
Although the
distribution of the northern population is widely extended, their major
populations are restricted primarily within protected area (PA) boundaries
(Paul et al. 2020), with some movement between major blocks of habitats along
riverine corridors and agriculture land (Warrier
2019). This was not always the case. In the late 1960s, the largest known
congregations of Swamp Deer in India were reported from the
grassland-agriculture mosaics, south-west of Dudhwa
(Schaller 1967). The disappearance of these large herds is, at least in part,
the outcome of the progressive conversion of grassland habitats in the Terai into agriculture and other land-uses, which are now
perhaps a mere 20% of their original extent (Dinerstein
2003; Strahorn 2009). In all likelihood, it may also
be attributed to the species being hunted, especially beyond PA boundaries
(Ahmed 2007).
The largest extant
population of the northern subspecies has been reported from Shuklaphanta National Park in Nepal (2,300 individuals) in
a grassland of 60 km2 area (Ghimire et al. 2019; Yadav 2021).
However, grassland habitats within Dudhwa Tiger
Reserve (DTR), inclusive of Dudhwa National Park
(DNP), Kishanpur Wildlife Sanctuary (KWS)
(cumulatively spanning 141 km2) have reportedly supported only
around 1,300 Swamp Deer individuals in recent decades (Qureshi et al. 1995;
Ahmed 2007). On the other hand, De (2001) reported around 2,100 individuals in
the same areas.
Although DNP and KWS
were declared PAs to conserve Swamp Deer and its natural habitat (Singh 1978),
assessments of population status and fine-scale distribution have been scant. Chanchani et al. (2014) noted that the detection of the
species was very sparse, even when transects in habitats with known
aggregations were carried out on elephant back.
There have been no
systematic population assessments for Swamp Deer since the late 2000s. The
species status may be increasingly precarious in its former strongholds such as
Sathiyana grasslands within DTR (Sankaran 1989).
Therefore, a status assessment of the species was conducted in grassland
habitats within Dudhwa Tiger Reserve in order to
develop long-term monitoring protocols.
Methods
Population counts
were conducted between March 2021–February 2022. We identified 11 monitoring
sites after discussion with park managers and frontline staff, followed by
reconnaissance surveys by the field team (Image 1). The counts were conducted
by two─three observers independently using high
vantage points like elevated machans or tall trees, across the four distinct
climatic seasons in the study area namely, summer (March 2021─June 2021),
monsoon (July─September), post-monsoon (October─November), and winter (December 2021─February
2022). Across these monitoring sites, we made 53 survey visits in summer, 26 in
monsoon, 23 in post-monsoon, and 60 visits in winter season. The low number of
visits in both monsoon and post-monsoon seasons is attributable to the water logging
and flooding which made the study area inaccessible. The data was compiled
& analyzed by estimating mean & standard errors of Swamp Deer
individuals counted at each monitoring site and climatic season using R
programming software ver 4.1.1 (R Development Core
Team 2021).
Results
Across the sampling
sites, the highest mean congregations of Swamp Deer were documented at the ‘Jhadi taal’ site in KWS [179
individuals (SE = 23.2)] in the summers, followed by the site ‘Rhino
Reintroduction Area-I’ in DNP (Figure 1). The same sites visited in the monsoon
months indicated low counts which is attributable to the movement of Swamp Deer
herds to woodlands, uplands, and farmlands abutting the boundaries of two PAs.
This is supported by the signs recorded during unintentional visits in
agricultural fields near two of our monitoring sites namely, ‘Madrahiya grasslands and Rhino Reintroduction Area-I’. We
encountered signs such as hoof marks and pellets of Swamp Deer from 10 villages
surrounding two of our sites along the southern peripheries of DNP. However, we
did not conduct any systematic signs surveys in the farmlands and other areas
adjoining the PA boundaries.
Discussion
Low counts of Swamp
Deer across the study area in the winter months can be attributed to flooding
caused by unseasonal rains in October 2021. This unusual event led to the rise
in water levels at major wetlands/grasslands (specifically Jhadi
taal in Kishanpur) of the
monitoring sites, rendering these habitats unsuitable for Swamp Deer. In addition,
low detectability in the grasslands due to the tall grasses (which may get as
high as 3─4 m in the peak dry season) in winters may have resulted in lower
counts of Swamp Deer at these sites. The low detections of Swamp Deer
individuals in the tall grasslands have also been emphasized in previous
research attempts which in turn have been limited to encounter rates and count
methods (Qureshi 1995; De et al. 2013). However, there still exist pertinent
gaps in robust methodologies to understand the trends in abundance and
population dynamics of this grassland ungulate over spatial and temporal
gradients (Chanchani et al. 2014).
Swamp Deer are
indicator species of the alluvial floodplains (Ahmed 2007; Singh & Prasad
2013). Many wetlands/swamps in the study area are threatened due to the
infestation of weeds such as Fox nuts Euryale ferox and Water Hyacinth Pontederia
crassipes which need immediate interventions to secure
these systems for dependent faunal species. In order to aid long-term research
on the population dynamics of the Swamp Deer, the inclusion of monitoring
exercises in the annual workplan of DTR administration is essential. Data
collection can be facilitated by the use of simple electronic forms (both in
English and native language), developed in discussion with experts, which can
be preloaded on mobile devices of frontline staff. This valuable data generated
through such efforts will help in designing necessary and robust conservation
interventions for both the Swamp Deer and its threatened habitats in the Dudhwa landscape.
As part of our
previous research work between 2019 & 2020, we assessed the probabilities
of habitat use by Swamp Deer in grasslands within DTR (Rastogi et al. 2022).
The results from the study revealed that about 30% of the overall grasslands
were used by the species, with an occurrence probability of more than 40%.
Therefore, gathering insights from previous work, we extended our survey
jointly with the DTR administration, Uttar Pradesh Forest Department to monitor
key grassland/wetland sites within the Dudhwa Tiger
Reserve as part of this study in order to aid long-term conservation of the
Swamp Deer.
For figure &
image – click here for full PDF
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