Woolly flying squirrel’s first documentation at 4,800m

DEHRADUN: In a first in India, experts from Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) have documented woolly flying squirrel in Uttarakhand’s Bhagirathi Basin. Listed in Schedule II of The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and identified as ‘endangered’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the woolly flying squirrel was believed to have become extinct until its rediscovery in Pakistan’s Sai Valley in 1994.

WII experts believe that the specie could be present in Jammu and Kashmir and in Himachal Pradesh but a confirmation be made only after a dedicated research.

The observations were made under the long-term project “Assessment and Monitoring of Climate Change Effects on Wildlife Species and Ecosystems for Developing Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies in the Indian Himalayan Region” under the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem (NMSHE), funded and coordinated by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India.

“In the Indian Himalayan region, the presence of the woolly flying squirrel was long suspected by experts. This discovery extends the distribution range of the species from the less humid north-western Trans-Himalayan zone to more humid western Himalayan region,” S Sathyakumar, senior scientist at WII who is heading the project, said. “This is the highest elevation record for any flying squirrel occurrence. The occurrence of this species at a new high elevation record is not surprising as the species prefer rocky and broken terrain and we suspect that the species is adapted to feed on other plant species along with the pine needles,” he added.