Raheem-2014-Western Ghats Land Snails-1-294

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viii voyage of the Beagle in 1836. Darwin found numerous shells of the distinctive genus that we now call Chilonopsis and realised that they were extinct. Darwin (1839, p. 470) concluded that the snails became extinct following the loss of their forest habitat and noted that "there can be little doubt that this great change in the vegetation affected not only the land-shells, causing eight species to become extinct, but likewise a multitude of insects". Nearly all recorded land-snail extinctions are from island faunas and it is much more difficult to determine what is happening to continental biotas. However, it may be that some of the species that have been described from the Western Ghats and are figured here are now extinct. We cannot know the extent of extinctions until detailed records of current distributions are available, but reports by the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) from other parts of India indicate extensive extinctions may have occurred in the past century. The ZSI State Fauna review of Meghalaya (Subba Rao et al., 1995) recorded only 56% of the previously recorded fauna (105 out of 188 species) and suggested that (see p. 85) "at least a few species of land molluscs" may have become extinct owing to habitat loss. Kay (1995, p. 57) went so far as to state that: "The work of the early British conchologists can never be repeated as much of India no longer appears to support native terrestrial molluscan faunas. Centuries of habitation associated with massive deforestation have resulted in the disappearance of virtually all natural habitats … the characteristic fauna of peninsular India has been virtually eliminated except for small but rapidly dwindling pockets; and there are virtually no land snails at all on the Indo-Gangetic plain, the most densely populated part of India". Kay surely overstated the case, but flying across India or casting your eyes across India on Google Earth (http://www.google.com/earth) demonstrates just how far the loss and fragmentation of natural habitats has progressed. On the ground the situation can be much worse than it appears from afar with degraded forests and various forms of drastic forest exploitation. A notable example in the Western Ghats is the forested Cardamom Hills of eastern Kerala, where magnificent canopied trees conceal the fact that the natural understory has been removed for the intensive cultivation of cardamom. From our limited observations tree seedlings appear to be absent and with current practice there will presumably be no succession and replacement of gerontic trees by native species. However, with the presence of mature trees the most difficult phase of forest restoration is already in place and there is considerable potential for setting aside even some small tracts in these areas and restoring natural habitats. Further north across the Anaimalai Hills, tracts of tea and coffee plantations dominate the landscape, but a few small pockets of forest survive on estate land. Such habitat remnants could be of enormous value as refugia for snails and many other organisms, at least in the short to medium term, and there is an urgent need to evaluate their importance. Snails can play a valuable role as surrogate or partial measures of biodiversity for identifying high priority conservation areas (Margules and Pressey, 2000; Moritz et al., 2001; Mumladze et al., 2014). Conservation reserves, community reserves and sacred groves have been shown to play an important role in preserving habitats for small organisms in India, but there is clearly potential for extending the local dimension of conservation.
ix Clearly there is an urgent need to enact conservation measures that will safeguard remaining natural habitats, to evaluate the relative conservation value of transformed habitats and to restore habitat connectivity. However, we should not be blind to the reality that such measures will prove inadequate. We have a responsibility to take action now that is relevant to the time in which we live. This is why we strongly support measures to set on record what exists today in the knowledge that further species will inevitably be lost. In expounding this view and our support for the Frozen Ark (http://www.frozenark.org) and related initiatives such as the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (http://www.ggbn.org) we have been criticised by some Indian colleagues as being defeatist and providing ammunition to those who might consider that this approach offers an alternative to the conservation of living species. The suggestion is that, by advocating the storage of DNA and ideally viable cells, we leave open the possibility that species could possibly be restored at some time in the future and it is therefore not so dreadful if species should become extinct. We are far from advocating preservation of viable cells as an alternative to species conservation, but restoring species by such means is no longer confined to science fiction and we have to accept the new responsibilities that the potential capacity of these new technologies imposes on us. This is about maximising future options and we consider that viable cell collections should be part of mainstream collecting efforts for major museums. The time when species can be lost and restored at a later date, when mankind has learned to live in harmony with nature, is possibly a long way off. But we should allow for this possibility and follow every available strategy to safeguard living diversity and record what we can of species that may become extinct despite our best efforts. Fred Naggs London, UK Dinarzarde Raheem Brussels, Belgium February, 2014
Page 1: A Systematic Revision of the Land S
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Page 11 and 12: xi Acknowledgements The groundwork
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