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Ecosystem Profile: Western Ghats & Sri Lanka
The CEPF niche for investment is based on analyses of conservation outcomes, threats to biodiversity, current conservation investments in the region, and stakeholder consultations. Throughout the hotspot, unique habitats rich in biodiversity in both protected and unprotected areas intersect with a highly fragmented, human-dominated landscape. Conservation activities within protected areas need to be strengthened and the substantial biodiversity in the adjoining unprotected areas must be conserved. Because these areas face a complex array of threats, biodiversity conservation within this landscape can only be effective with the active involvement of civil society in protecting and restoring biodiversity in public as well as private lands. The timing of such efforts is critical, as demographic and economic pressures on the landscape continue to mount.
CEPF’s niche in the Western Ghats will be to provide incremental support to existing protected area efforts and generate momentum for biodiversity conservation around protected areas to enhance habitat connectivity and enable greater civil society participation in conservation efforts.
To refine the CEPF niche, CEPF investment will focus on 80 key biodiversity areas predominately located within the five corridors identified (the Anamalai, Malnad-Kodagu, Mysore-Nilgiri, Periyar-Agasthyamalai, and Sahyadri-Konkan corridors). CEPF will provide incremental support to the 37 (46 percent) sites within the existing protected area network. The remaining 54 percent of the sites consist of reserved forests and private lands such as plantation estates. These areas are significant for biodiversity conservation in the Western Ghats as: i) some globally threatened species are found only in these lands, ii) significant populations of Endangered species occur in these lands, and iii) several landscape species such as tigers use these areas for feeding or transit.
Priority corridors are indicated for some of the investment priorities based on ecological and socioeconomic processes within the corridors that were deemed likely to influence the success or failure of conservation activities. This prioritization was based on expert knowledge and threat assessments conducted during the ecosystem profiling process.
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