Perception of Local People on Urban Wilderness habitats in Kolhapur City
Green spaces, green corridors, open spaces, and urban wilderness particularly in and around city, town and urban and semi urban areas have gained significant importance in the growing urban landscape. Due to their diversity of ecological structures, characters, functions, including their role both in environmental and social health, Urban Wilderness (UW) areas are crucial and inseparable part of any urbanisation, defining the quality of life in the cities and towns.Thereforeinteractions of the residents with their physical and socio cultural surroundings create a wide impact on UW areas. The tools like Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)and Social Impact Assessment (SIA)were used in the study to reveal local people's perception regarding needs, use of and threats to the77UW habitat sites. Perception of 1320 localrespondents onUW areas, in and around growing city of Kolhapur,was studied with multiple logistic regressions and test for goodness of fit was used for better understanding of the UWs.