Improve the roles of nature reserves in conservation of endangered pheasant in a highly urbanized region

Abstract

Nature reserves play an extraordinarily important role in conserving animal populations and their habitats. However, landscape change and unreasonable zoning designations often render these protected areas inadequate. Therefore, regular evaluation of the efficacy of protected lands is critical for maintaining and improving management strategies. Using species distribution models and GAP analysis, we assessed the changes in suitable habitat for the Brown Eared-pheasant (Crossoptilon mantchuricum) in two Chinese nature reserves between 1995 and 2013. Our results showed that the habitat suitability of Brown Eared-pheasant has changed dramatically during this period, and fragmentation analyses showed an increase in concentration area and decrease in patch area. In particular, our findings show that the national nature reserves need to adjust their ranges to ensure the conservation of this flagship species. Our study further provides a new viewpoint for evaluating the efficacy of protected lands, particularly in highly urbanized regions where conservation goals must be balanced with changing landscapes.

Integrating habitat suitability modelling and assessment of the conservation gaps of nature reserves for the threatened Reeves’s Pheasant

“…Suitable habitat within the network occurred at only 45 NNRs in the study area, and was concentrated at 29 NNRs of the five provinces or municipalities (>98%). There are similar observations on other species with extensive suitable Song et al 2020), and the most concerned endangered species in China (Wen et al 2015).…”

“…Suitable habitat within the network occurred at only 45 NNRs in the study area, and was concentrated at 29 NNRs of the five provinces or municipalities (>98%). There are similar observations on other species with extensive suitable habitat occurring outside the NNR network and unprotected, such as Giant Panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca (Yang et al 2020), Brown-eared Pheasant Crossoptilon mantchuricum (Li et al 2016, Song et al 2020), and the most concerned endangered species in China (Wen et al 2015).…”

“…in Hubei Dabieshan NNR), where the abundance of Reeves's Pheasant was higher in the experimental zone than that in the buffer zone (Xu et al 2005, Zheng 2015. This might suggest that the Reeves's Pheasant survives relatively well in habitats with some degree of human intervention, similar to Brown-eared Pheasant (Xu et al 2005, Zhou et al 2017, Song et al 2020. On the other hand, habitat in the buffer zone may not be as pristine as the core zone (Xu et al 2007).…”

Socioeconomic development shows positive links to the conservation efficiency of China's protected area network

“…The large size and clear boundaries of national nature reserves greatly aid their coherent management. Their high public profile also facilitates a lot of direct funding and surveillance from provincial and central governments, resulting in comparatively low levels of illegal activities (Song et al, 2020). In contrast, we believe the interest of local people in local biodiversity and their ecological knowledge may significantly contribute to the comparatively high conservation outcomes of county‐level nature reserves.…”

Modeling global habitat suitability and environmental predictor of distribution of a Near Threatened avian scavenger at a high spatial resolution

“…These models are among the most frequently used methods in studying avian ecology, evolution, biogeography, and conservation (Engler et al, 2017;Fourcade et al, 2017;Brambilla et al, 2018Brambilla et al, , 2019Brambilla et al, , 2020Ramellini et al, 2019;Burns et al, 2020;Ferrer-Paris and Sánchez-Mercado, 2021;Li et al, 2021;Lu et al, 2021;Mudereri et al, 2021;Avotins et al, 2022;Condro et al, 2022;Escobar-Luján et al, 2022). They have been applied to identifying suitable habitats of species (Tellería et al, 2019;Song et al, 2020;Bai et al, 2022;Buechley et al, 2022), predicting the impacts of climate change on species distribution (Escobar-Luján et al, 2022;Zhu et al, 2022), mapping avian hotspots and richness (Moradi et al, 2019), and effectiveness of protected areas for conservation of species (Buechley et al, 2022;Escobar-Luján et al, 2022;Tian et al, 2022). One particular application of SDMs is to model species' global habitat suitability, which is very critical for largescale conservation planning of biodiversity (Panthi et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2022).…”