EVALUATING THE POPULATION HABITAT VIABILITY OF CONSERVATION PRIORITY SPECIES OF THE INDIAN HIMALAYAN REGION

Improving wildlife conservation and policy depends on appropriate concepts and applied tools. It can permit early recognition and accurate estimation of problems, selection of a proper solution, and successful implementation of the resolution, continuous evaluation of the original problem, and the effectiveness and adequacy of implementation efforts. Population habitat viability is one of the most valuable techniques to determine extinction risks and population declines of endangered species. Population viability analysis (PVA) allows the experts to estimate extinction probabilities by incorporating identifiable threats for population survival evaluated by stochastic models of the extinction process. Furthermore, it also predicts the future size of a population and estimates the probability of a population going extinct over a given period. Our present attempt to implement PHVA for threatened species of Indian Himalayan Regions (IHR) and its extension of evaluating the habitat vulnerability can aid in all these phases of the restoration of endangered populations and prevent currently larger populations from being reduced and eventually threatened. In turn, the present evaluation for respective species of PHVA can help decision and policymakers understand the extinction process in general. We believe that the results from the present study will be most effective if applied within an adaptive management framework, with a regional emphasis on individual species.