Sharma, Narayan and Deka, B and Sinha, Anindya
(2022)
Diminishing habitats, vanishing species: Primates of the threatened tropical lowland rainforest fragments in the Upper Brahmaputra Valley, Northeastern India.
In:
Imperiled: The Encyclopedia of Conservation.
Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 184-193.
ISBN 978-0-12-821139-7
Full text not available from this repository.
| Abstract: |
The tropical lowland rainforests of the Upper Brahmaputra Valley in the northeastern Indian state of Assam have, in the past, and are increasingly being converted to other land-use forms, driven by historical and current anthropogenic factors. Development and the heavy dependence of people on these forests for their daily needs has resulted in the severe loss of the once-contiguous forests into isolated fragments, with a hostile, human-dominated, matrix hindering the movement of most nonhuman species between them. These forest fragments, however, continue to be rich in various flora and fauna, including seven primate species. This entry examines the different drivers of habitat fragmentation and their consequences for the nonhuman primates of the Upper Brahmaputra Valley. We first analyze the historical drivers of forest cover change in the landscape during the pre-colonial, colonial and the post-colonial periods, locating these changes within the political economy and demographic milieu of each regime. We next examine the recent drivers of forest cover change, and discuss, more precisely, the impacts of local and landscape-scale factors on the richness, abundance, and distribution of primate populations across 42 rainforest fragments in the Valley. Given that we have now specifically observed the extirpation of six diurnal primates in several of these fragments across this region, we present a detailed report on the recent history and current status of diurnal primates in one large (2098 ha) and three small (c. 500 ha) fragments of the Valley. Finally, we speculate on some of the important alternative conservation strategies that should possibly be adopted to ensure the coexistence of nonhuman primates and humans in the rather precarious future of the last lowland rainforest fragments of the Brahmaputra Valley. |
| Item Type: |
Book Chapter
|
| Subjects: |
School of Natural and Engineering Sciences > Biological Systems
School of Natural and Engineering Sciences > Animal Studies |
| Divisions: |
Schools > Natural Sciences and Engineering |
| Date Deposited: |
18 Feb 2026 09:07 |
| Last Modified: |
19 Feb 2026 05:20 |
| Official URL: |
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/refe... |
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| Funders: |
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| Projects: |
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| DOI: |
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-821139-7.00211-7 |
| URI: |
http://eprints.nias.res.in/id/eprint/3167 |
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