Guwahati, Aug 30: A single track of 1.65 route kilometres of railway line (currently broad-gauge but unelectrified as yet) has divided the Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary in the Jorhat district of Assam since 1887 into two unequal parts.
Now the primatologists have suggested rerouting a 1.65-km-long railway track that has divided an eastern Assam sanctuary to the western hoolock gibbon.
Their report in Science, a journal, follows that of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) on designing an artificial canopy bridge to facilitate the movement of the hoolock gibbons across the broad-gauge line within the Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary. The track is yet to be electrified.
The authors of the study are Rohit Ravindra Samita Jha and Gopi Govindan Veeraswami of the Dehradun-based WII, Dilip Chetry of the Assam-based biodiversity conservation group Aaranyak, and Nandha Kumar of Assam’s Department of Environment and Forests.
The Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary in Jorhat covers 21 sq. km and is a key habitat for the Western Hoolock Gibbon. It’s home to around 125 gibbons, organised into over two dozen family groups. It stands as India’s sole protected area named after a primate species.
“Gibbon families on both sides of the railway track have thus been effectively isolated from each other, thereby compromising their population’s genetic variability and further endangering their already threatened survival in the sanctuary,” the report said.
An artificial canopy bridge is a conservation initiative facilitating the movement of arboreal animals across life-threatening man-made structures or projects.
In 2015, the Northeast Frontier Railway constructed an iron canopy bridge, but it was not found suitable for the gibbons to swing across the track.
The Forest Department and Aaranyak joined hands four years later to grow a natural canopy bridge, but regular pruning of the trees by the railways during track maintenance affected the movement of the apes.
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