I recently spoke with Mongabay India who accompanied me to field sites to cover my recent research in Madhya Pradesh. My collaborators and I studied the biodiversity and social outcomes of forest restoration through the removal of invasive species, Lantana camara. This research is ongoing, and more results to come soon. Have a watch of this great video about some of the research that is already published. Here is the article on the restoratin efforts accompanying this video! This week I had the chance to 'close the loop' in Bhopal. I presented my research findings and recommendations to the Principal Chief Conservation of Forests (Wildlife and production) and other officials and groups involved in a massive effort to restore dry forests through invasive species removal around Kanha Tiger Reserve. I am glad that my work will inform the next steps to upscale restoration activities around the reserve, but also in other locations in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Foundation For Ecological Security (FES) brought together this group of stakeholders - financiers, local people, researchers and governmental officials - for this important conversation on forest restoration. Looking forward to seeing restoration efforts upscaled!
Photo credit: Dhwani Lalai This year the annual ATBC meeting came to India! It was a pleasure to meet friends, old and new, within the field of tropical biology and ecology. I presented my work on the social and ecological outcomes of restoring a central Indian tropical dry forest. Along with friend and colleague, Vijay Ramesh, I also participated in National Geographic Society's panel on fundraising.
However, the most exciting of all the talks was one given by mentee and colleague, Mayuri Kotian on our work at assessing the efficacy of acoustic indices in quantifying biodiversity measures such as avian species richness (paper in review). I recently wrote an article on the trees of the Kanha landscape in central India. This was an ode (of sorts) to a landscape I owe all my ecological knowledge and understanding to. In this piece I describe my journey from viewing trees just as data to seeing the trees for what they are. Have a read!
I am excited to share that we have another paper from the Project Dhvani team. Co-founder, Vijay Ramesh, led a great study on using acoustics to quantify the impact of tropical humid forest restoration in a tea and coffee mixed use landscape in the Anaimalai hills in the Western Ghats.
I remember visiting these sites back in 2019 to collect data and do bird counts, and it's always wonderful to see all the work come to fruition as a peer-reviewed article. Have a read of the paper here! |
|