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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2021

SHAN TIAN Open the ORCID record for SHAN TIAN [Opens in a new window] ,
SHUAI LU ,
JUNQIN HUA ,
JIANG CHANG ,
JIANQIANG LI ,
ZHENGWANG ZHANG ,
YONG WANG ,
JILIANG XU  and
MINGXIANG ZHANG
SHAN TIAN
Affiliation:
School of Ecology and Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing100083, China.
SHUAI LU
Affiliation:
School of Ecology and Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing100083, China.
JUNQIN HUA
Affiliation:
School of Ecology and Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing100083, China.
JIANG CHANG
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing100012, China.
JIANQIANG LI
Affiliation:
School of Ecology and Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing100083, China.
ZHENGWANG ZHANG
Affiliation:
Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering, College of Life Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing100875, China.
YONG WANG
Affiliation:
Department of Biological and Environmental Science, College of Agricultural, Life and Natural Sciences, Alabama A&M University, Normal, AL35762, USA. College of International Education, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing210037, China.
JILIANG XU*
Affiliation:
School of Ecology and Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing100083, China.
MINGXIANG ZHANG
Affiliation:
School of Ecology and Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing100083, China.
*
*Author for correspondence; email: [email protected]
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Summary

As 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 Pheasant Syrmaticus reevesii populations 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.

Keywords

Gap analysisSyrmaticus reevesiiNational nature reservesSuitable habitat
Type
Research Article
Information
Bird Conservation International , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 384 - 397
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of BirdLife International

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