1. Integrating habitat suitability modelling and assessment of the conservation gaps of nature reserves for the threatened Reeves’s Pheasant
- Author
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Junqin Hua, Jiang Chang, Jianqiang Li, Shan Tian, Yong Wang, Mingxiang Zhang, Zhengwang Zhang, Jiliang Xu, and Shuai Lu
- Subjects
0106 biological sciences ,Nature reserve ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Ecology ,biology ,010603 evolutionary biology ,01 natural sciences ,Pheasant ,Fishery ,Habitat suitability ,Geography ,biology.animal ,Threatened species ,Animal Science and Zoology ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,Nature and Landscape Conservation - Abstract
SummaryAs threats to biodiversity proliferate, establishment and expansion of protected areas have increasingly been advocated in recent decades. In establishing a network of protected areas, recurrent assessments of the biodiversity conservation actually afforded by these areas is required. Gap analysis has been useful to evaluate the sufficiency and performance of protected areas. We surveyed Reeves’s PheasantSyrmaticus reevesiipopulations in 2018–2019 across its distribution range in central China to quantify the distribution of habitat suitable for this species. Our goal was to ascertain the current distribution of Reeves’s Pheasant and then identify the gaps in protecting Reeves’s Pheasant of the existing national nature reserve (NNR) network to provide suggestions for improving the conservation of this important species. The existing NNR network encompassed only 17.0% of the habitat suitable for Reeves’s Pheasant. Based on the current distributions of both suitable habitat and NNRs for Reeves’s Pheasant, we suggest most currently unprotected areas comprised moderately suitable habitat for species and should be prioritized in the future. A multiple species approach using Reeves’s Pheasant as a flagship species should be considered to understand the extent of mismatch between the distributions of protected areas and suitable habitat to improve the management effectiveness of NNRs. This case study provides an example of how the development of a conservation reserve network may be based on species distribution and habitat assessments and is useful to conservation efforts in other regions and for other species.
- Published
- 2021