The Wild Canids - India Project
Here is your chance to contribute to the research and conservation of wild canids in India by taking part in a nationwide online survey
The Wild Canids – India Project is a venture by a team of researchers to gather information on wild canids in India and to create a database that can aid in the research and conservation of these species. The project relies on participation by wildlife enthusiasts, photographers, researchers, conservationists and citizens to contribute recent sightings and other records of wild canids through a user-friendly interface.
The online survey is already open and over the next three months (1 October to 31 December 2018), the project hopes to collate presence records of wild canids from across the country. The project is focusing on eight species and sub-species of wild canids: Dhole, Golden Jackal, Indian Wolf, Himalayan Wolf, Red Fox, Desert Fox, Indian Fox and Tibetan fox. The Striped Hyena has also been added to the list since it is ecologically similar to many wild canids.
Striped Hyena; Photograph: Kalyan Varma
Girish Arjun Punjabi of the Wild Canids India Project Team says: "Wild canids are a globally threatened group of predators. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand their distribution across large scales to set conservation priorities. But, at the same time, it is difficult to collect useful data from large regions, such as the scale of districts or states. This is where citizen science helps. Interested citizens can contribute authentic information on sightings, photographs and camera-trap records from the last three years which will help us map species occurrence in a scientific manner."
The information obtained from the survey is very important for the classification of species status, such as the IUCN RED LIST assessments and for setting regional or national conservation targets.
If you have presence records for any of the species listed above, please head over to the Wild Canids – India Project website and submit your entries. Also, please help spread the word and share it with friends and colleagues who may have information on these species.
Your contributions will be extremely valuable in creating a database of authentic information on these understudied carnivore species.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop a mail at [email protected].
Cover Photograph of a Desert Fox by Manish Vaidya