How Threatened Is Scincella huanrenensis? An Update on Threats and Trends

Abstract

It is important to understand the dynamics of population size to accurately assess threats and implement conservation activities when required. However, inaccurate estimates are harming both the threat estimation process, and the resulting conservation actions. Here, we address the extinction threats to Scincella huanrenensis, a species described in the People’s Republic of China, but also occurring on the Korean peninsula. Estimating the threats to the species is not an easy task due to its unknown population status in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Here we analysed the literature to acquire the known presence point for the species, along with datapoints originating from opportunistic field surveys, and employed habitat suitability models to estimate the range of the species. We then followed the categories and criteria of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species to assess the extinction risk of the species. We found the species not to be fitting the threatened category at the global scale based on the range size, the only category for which enough data was available. We recommend the status of the species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species to be updated as it is now listed as critically endangered (CR), a listing fitting a national assessment for the People’s Republic (PR) of China. While this species is possibly less threatened than currently listed, this is not a genuine improvement, and specific conservation aspects should not be neglected due to its specialisation to medium to high elevation habitat.

Citizen science and roadkill trends in the Korean herpetofauna: The importance of spatially biased and unstandardized data

“…Similarly, E. argus have small home ranges (Kim et al, 2012) and they are restricted to coastal sand dunes, inland grasslands along lakes, and mountain slopes with low vegetation cover (Lee et al, 2012). Finally, the distribution of the third species, S. huanrenensis, is poorly known although potentially distributed across a broader range than currently known (Shin et al, 2021), and the species is usually found in the forest interiors (Lee et al, 2012). The behavioral characteristics and habitat use of the three lizard species is likely the cause for the reduced risk of roadkill.…”

Driven to the edge: Species distribution modeling of a Clawed Salamander (Hynobiidae: Onychodactylus koreanus) predicts range shifts and drastic decrease of suitable habitats in response to climate change

“…We used MaxEnt for our modeling because of the algorithm's ability to explicitly account for spatial bias in the occurrence dataset (via a density raster; Shin, Messenger, et al, 2021). We calibrated the current habitat suitability model with 10,000 target group background points and 10-fold cross-validation (Thapa et al, 2018).…”