Help rescue wild animals and birds in India

Greetings from Wildlife Trust of India!

Thank you so much for making a donation to our project ‘Help Rescue Wild Animals and Birds in India’. Your support is highly valued as it helped us create a safer world for eight frog species in Delhi. Here’s an update on activities conducted with your support.

Amphibians play an important role in the ecosystem by regulating biomass in lower trophic levels. Their presence is indicative of a healthy ecosystem. Rapid urbanisation in the Delhi-NCR region has led to an increase in road kills and habitat fragmentation of amphibians. Preliminary studies conducted across amphibian breeding sites in 2021 showed them to be the most impacted by road kills. It is imperative to understand and reduce the impact of such threats to ensure the protection of this family. Delhi-NCR has only eight confirmed species (Microhyla nilphamariensis, Uperodon systoma, Minervarya pierrei, Duttaphrynus melanostictus, Dulttaphrynus stomaticus, Hoplobatrachus tigerinus, Euphlyctis cyanophlyctis, Sphaerotheca breviceps) of amphibians in isolated localities like Delhi Ridge, Aravalli Reserve and outer periphery of Delhi NCR.

A Rapid Action Project was sanctioned to mitigate road mortalities of amphibians in Delhi-NCR. The proponent has observed instances of amphibian road kills happening on rainy days or a day after so he plans to test strategies to reduce such instances of road kills. One strategy is to set up water channels with a grill cover to assist frogs in migrating with the water flow. Sikanderpur already has such water channels and tadpoles are seen in high numbers during the monsoons and shall work as a control site. Similar channels are to be constructed near residential areas.

Another strategy involves installing speed breakers to reduce speed of moving vehicles and adding street lights in low-visibility areas to make smaller animals visible. This is already in process as residents complained about bad lighting and rash driving so this has been working in favour of the frogs. The team is liaising with the management for more lights and speed breakers in the region. Further Signage will also be put up to increase awareness about resident Amphibian species and reduce the threat of road kills.

With permissions from the Municipal corporations, water channels are being constructed to facilitate tadpole movement during breeding season.

We are hopeful these measures would help in protecting the amphibian species in India’s capital city, Delhi.

Warm regards,

Team WTI