ANNOUNCEMENTS
Biodiversity involves interactions between landscape and species diversity to supply ecosystem services and dis-services. Migration of species from one habitat to another leads to competition between resource utilization and ecosystem processes. Introduction of exotic or alien species can alter the way a native species processes ecosystem functions and hence, supply of ecosystem services and dis-services is altered eventually affecting human-well-being. The direction, however, varies on how people perceive these ecosystem services and dis-services. The study examines the perception of people on ability of Prosopis juliflora, a vastly spread invasive species in the forests of Delhi, to supply ecosystem services and dis-services. It also examines how this perceived supply impacts the willingness of people to contribute to ecological restoration of native plant biodiversity. This study has been set up in the context of the only wildlife sanctuary in the city of Delhi known as the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary. The significance of a protected area is that it excludes the legal utilisation of forest lands by people for provisional services, thereby controlling for anthropogenic disturbance on native biodiversity which makes the model of invasive-native competition more robust.
The findings revealed that people living close to Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary do perceive that without biomass contributing to provisioning services, people do perceive Prosopis juliflora to be athreat to native biodiversity and it is their perception of the services impacted by Prosopis juliflora that motivates them to contribute to biological suppression of the invasive species through native species enrichment.
