Over the past 40 years, CWS India has conducted extensive research on the extraordinary biodiversity of our planet, ranging from large and small mammals to reptiles, amphibians, birds to flora, and other exciting critters!
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Big Cats and Carnivores
Led by our founder Dr. Ullas Karanth, CWS began its earliest research in the 1980s in India focusing on tigers! This project which originated in Nagarahole (and grew to several wildlife parks across India) remains the world’s longest running big cat project in the world- with over 800 individual tigers identified. Concurrently, we began to study leopards, wild dogs, sloth bears and the many prey species that co-occur in the forests of India.
We pioneered the development of field methods and new sampling techniques in collaboration with many partners globally including the United States Geological Survey. CWS has been a leader in the fields of radio-telemetry, advanced field survey methods, animal population modelling and estimation. Our contributions to wildlife science include methodology for safe capture and immobilisation of wild tigers and leopards, occupancy sampling, development of innovative models and protocols for matching stripe/spot patterns, and genetic identification of individual tigers and bio-geographic taxonomy of tigers – many of which have been adopted as standard practice by scientists across the world.
CWS research has carved out a unique niche for itself globally, combining rigorous field-based research with innovative methods to produce over 70 peer-reviewed scientific publications on tigers (40% of all peer-reviewed scientific papers published) and more than 150 papers on other wildlife species, their behavior, ecology and distribution. CWS has collaborated and shared its expertise with many wildlife research and conservation projects in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Russia, Thailand, as well as African and Latin American countries.
Biodiversity Outside Protected Areas
India’s wildlife persists in protected areas that cover 5% of land and in tracts of land outside these areas. Of particular interest are human-modified agricultural landscapes and agroforestry areas (coffee, rubber, areca, tea etc.) which harbour a diversity of birds, mammals, amphibians and other ecologically sensitive species, especially in the tropics. Our Chief Conservation Scientist Dr. Krithi Karanth in collaboration with Dr. Paul Robbins and Dr. Ashwini Chhatre implemented an extensive research project on coffee-rubber-areca farms across 30,000 sq. km in the Western Ghats. This interdisciplinary research project established that shade-grown coffee supports 204 bird species, including 79 forest-dependent species with not many differences between arabica and robusta! This landscape-level study found that sustainable farming practices (restricting pesticides and minimising artificial fertilisers while retaining tree cover) could offer substantial benefits to birds. Similar benefits were found for amphibians, butterflies, mammals and trees. We continue to build on socio-ecological research to understand how wildlife can persist in anthropogenic landscapes across India.
