Land-use and climate change accelerate the loss of habitat and
ecological corridor to Reeves’s Pheasant (Syrmaticus reevesii) in China
Abstract
Human activity and climate change are widely considered to be main
responsible for Galliformes bird extinction. Due to a decline in
population, the Reeves’s Pheasant (Syrmaticus reevesii), a member of the
Galliformes family, was recently elevated to first-class national
protected status in China. However, determining their factor on
extinction and provide remedy is challenging owing to the lack of
long-term data with high spatial and temporal resolution. Here, based on
national field survey we used habitat suitability models and integrated
data on geographical environment, road development, land-use and climate
change to predict potential changes from 1995 to 2050 in the
distribution and connectivity of Reeves’s Pheasant habitat. Furthermore,
ecological corridors were identified using the Minimum Cumulative
Resistance (MCR) model. The priority of building ecological corridors
was then determined by combining the ecological source and the network
cost-weight importance index. The study results indicate that both
intensified land-use and climate change were associated with the
increased habitat loss of the Reeves’s Pheasant. In more recent decades,
road construction and land-use changes have been linked to a rise in
local extinction, and future climate change is predicted to cause the
habitat to become even more fragmented and lose 89.58% of its total
area. The ecological corridor for Reeves’s Pheasant will continue to
decline by 88.55%. To counteract the negative effects of human activity
and climate change on Reeves’s Pheasant survivorship, we recommend
taking immediate action. This includes bolstering cooperation amongst
provincial governments, restoring habitats, and creating ecological
corridors amongst important habitat.