Landscapes of Protection: Forest Change and Fragmentation in Northern West Bengal, India Harini Nagendra Æ Somajita Paul Æ Sajid Pareeth Æ Sugato Dutt Received: 21 August 2008 / Accepted: 29 August 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract In the tropics and sub-tropics, where high lev- els of biodiversity co-exist with some of the greatest levels of population density, achieving complete exclusion in protected area contexts has proved close to impossible. There is a clear need to recognize that parks are signifi- cantly impacted by human–environment interactions in the larger landscape within which they are embedded, and to move the frontier of research beyond the boundaries of protected areas in order to examine larger landscapes where multiple forms of ownership and access are embedded. This research evaluates forest change and fragmentation between 1990 and 2000, in a landscape surrounding the Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary in the Indian state of West Bengal. This protected forest is bounded to the south by a less intensively protected area, the Baikunthapur Reserve Forest, and surrounded by a mosaic of unprotected, largely private land holdings. Results indicate differences in the extent and spatial pattern of forest cover change in these three zones, corresponding to different levels of government protection, access and monitoring. The two protected areas experience a trend toward forest regrowth, relating to the cessation of com- mercial logging by park management during this period. Yet, there is still substantial clearing toward peripheral areas that are well connected to illegal timber markets by transportation networks. The surrounding landscape, although experiencing some forest regrowth within less intensively cultivated tea plantations, is also becoming increasingly fragmented, with potentially critical impacts on the maintenance of effective wildlife corridors in this ecologically critical region. Keywords Land cover change Á Protected areas Á Fragmentation Á Remote sensing Introduction From scattered attempts to institutionalize government control over forest lands in the 18th century, protected areas have now become a cornerstone of conservation efforts worldwide. Current estimates indicate that over 100,000 protected areas were in existence by 2003, protecting an area of 18,763,407 km 2 or 11.5% of the earth’s land surface—at least on paper (Rodrigues and others 2004; Naughton-Tre- ves and others 2005). While the majority of these protected areas attempt to limit forest clearing by access and harvest restrictions that are imposed by national governments, sev- eral of these parks have been established in areas where local communities co-exist with forests, and are dependent on resources derived from these areas. In such contexts, achieving complete protection has proved close to impos- sible, and has led to repeated conflicts between park authorities and local communities (Schwartzman and others 2000; Terborgh and others 2002; Chapin 2004). Such conflicts seem to be particularly acute in the tro- pics and sub-tropics, where high levels of biodiversity co- exist with some of the greatest levels of population density H. Nagendra (&) Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC), Indiana University, 408 North Indiana Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47408, USA e-mail: nagendra@indiana.edu H. Nagendra Á S. Paul Á S. Pareeth Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore, Karnataka, India S. Dutt Department of Geography, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA 123 Environmental Management DOI 10.1007/s00267-009-9374-9