IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Srinivas, G.; Babu, S.; Kumar, H.N.; Molur, S. | |
| Assessing the status and distribution of large mammals in Highwavy and its environs, Southern Western Ghats | |
| 2013 Full Book | |
Information such as presence or absence of any species co-relates to the habitat in which it lives. However, baseline information is the basic requisite for any management action. It is basic requisite for any management action. Since there are different taxa which constitute the biodiversity of the area, effective documentation requires a basic knowledge of habits of animals, its habitats and behaviour. In many of the protected area such information is lacking or dating back to several decades one such area is Highwavy (Megamalai). In spite of being an important wildlife corridor, updated data on mammals of the landscape is lacking. While reviewing the available literature on mammals of the landscape, it was found that mammal survey in the hill range was started in the beginning of 19th century by Prater. He explored and collected mammals from the Cumbam Valley and the northern slopes of Highwavy Mountains, and these specimens were preserved in Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) Museum collections. Subsequently, Wroughton (1917) wrote the descriptions for collection made by Prater, from which he identified 24 species mainly rodents and bats. After a lapse of three decades, Hutton (1949) collected and described the habit, habitat and distribution of 56 mammal species including few range restricted and threatened species. More than two decades later (1972), when working on the specimens of megachiropterans at BNHS, Thonglongya had noticed that the specimen labelled _Cynopterus sphinx_, collected at the Highwavy Mountains, was wrongly identified. He identified it as a new genus Latidens and named the species as salimalii, after India's eminent ornithologist Salim Ali. Latidens salimalii (Thonglongya 1972) is endemic to south India. Subsequent survey by BNHS and Harrison Zoological Museum rediscovered_ L. salimalii_ at the Highwavy Tea and Coffee Estates (Kardana Coffee Estate) and suggested that it is located from two areas in southern Western Ghats (Muni 1993, Menon, 2009). In addition, few short surveys were also attempted to address the roost site characteristics of the bat (Singaravelan & Marimuthu 2003 a, b). Kumara et al. (2011) highlighted that the landscape hold one of the largest populations of globally threatened lion-tailed macaque _Macaca silenus_ with larger group size. Bhupathy et al. (2012) has highlighted the conservation significance of the landscape using select vertebrates. Although the landscape has been well explored in terms of mammals over the decades (1917 - 2012) through a series of short-term studies at different time period (1917-2012), the updated list of mammals and their current status (qualitative) in the landscape is meagre. In this context, we update the mammals of the Highwavy based on primary (June 2011 - December 2012) and secondary information. |
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