Connecting Habitats: Wildlife Occupancy Across the Satpura-Pench Corridor

Ananya Dutta, Deepti Gupta-Raunkali , Kaushal Chouhan, Ajinkya Bhatkar, Sanket Bhale, Pranav Chanchani

The Satpura–Pench Corridor (SPC) is one of the most important wildlife linkages in Central India, connecting the Satpura and Pench Tiger Reserves, and facilitating the movement and persistence of tigers and other large mammal meta-populations across the Central Indian landscape. However, habitat fragmentation, infrastructure development, mining, agricultural expansion, and other anthropogenic pressures are increasingly altering the corridor. Despite these pressures, the corridor continues to support a diverse assemblage of wildlife while retaining its functional role as a movement and dispersal landscape for several species. A contemporary, spatially extensive assessment was therefore required to establish how wildlife currently use the landscape and to identify areas critical for maintaining corridor connectivity.
Between December 2024 and April 2025, an extensive camera-trap survey was conducted across approximately 1,650 km² of the corridor. The survey covered 821 sampling units of 2 km² each, distributed across seven forest divisions and 21 ranges. The study represents the first comprehensive, corridor-wide assessment of wildlife occurrence and habitat use across the SPC, providing a contemporary baseline for the corridor. Camera-trap detections were used to document mammal occurrence, estimate Relative Abundance Indices, and model species- and guild-level habitat use while accounting for imperfect detection. Individual identification of large carnivores, combined with spatial analyses, was used to examine patterns of wildlife use and identify potential bottlenecks within the corridor.
A total of 26 mammalian species were documented, including tiger (Panthera tigris), leopard (P. pardus), Asiatic wild dog (Cuon alpinus), Indian wolf (Canis lupus pallipes), sloth bear (Melursus ursinus), honey badger (Mellivora capensis indica), four-horned antelope (Tetracerus quadricornis), chinkara (Gazella bennettii), nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus), and wild pig (Sus scrofa). The widespread occurrence of leopards, wild pigs, nilgai, and four-horned antelope demonstrates the corridor's continued importance in providing habitat and movement opportunities beyond protected area boundaries.
Occupancy analysis revealed that carnivore presence was strongly associated with areas supporting higher prey abundance, while herbivore distribution was influenced largely by tree cover and proximity to protected areas. Within the corridor, the Lawaghoghri–Ambada–Sausar area emerged as an important area of overlap, supporting high probabilities of use by both carnivores and ungulates. The study also identified critical gaps in structural connectivity that threaten the corridor’s long-term integrity. These structurally vulnerable sections are characterized by multiple human-induced pressures. The Navegaon–Junardeo gap was identified as the most critical bottleneck within the corridor, with limited forest cover, multiple infrastructure barriers, and the conspicuous absence of large carnivore detections. The continued degradation of such bottlenecks could substantially reduce connectivity between the two tiger reserves.
The study’s findings highlight an important conservation reality: although wildlife continues to persist and move through human-dominated landscapes, such as agricultural areas, across the SPC, wildlife occurrence within the corridor does not necessarily indicate functional connectivity between the two protected areas, particularly where critical bottlenecks constrain movement. Maintaining connectivity across the SPC will require coordinated multi-stakeholder action to extend conservation efforts beyond reserved forests to private agricultural lands and revenue lands. This will entail a combination of approaches, including habitat restoration, mitigation of the impacts of linear infrastructure, wildlife-friendly land-use planning, mining safeguards, improved livestock management, and community stewardship of private land and commons. Protecting and restoring this corridor is critical not only for the conservation of tigers and other wide-ranging species, but also for maintaining the ecological integrity of the Central Indian landscape.