Multispecies Corridor Planning With Flagship Species As Surrogated

Habitat loss and fragmentation have become the greatest threat to terrestrial biodiversity,and the issues involved in biodiversity conservation are extremely broad.It is extremely difficult to comprehensively manage and monitor all aspects of biodiversity.The use of flagship species and umbrella species to protect biodiversity within a region is an effective way.Establishing wildlife corridors is one of the most effective strategies to ease habitat fragmentation.Giant pandas(Ailuropoda melanoleuca)as the flagship species and umbrella species,taking them as surrogated to establish multispecies corridors would protect themelves and their sympatric species simultaneously.In order to explore the establishment of a multispecies corridor with the flagship species of giant pandas as surrogated,the study screened out the distribution data of four giant panda sympatric species--leopard cat(Prionailurus bengalensis),Chinese serow(Capricornis milneedwardsii),tufted deer(Elaphodus cephalophus)and red panda(Ailurus fulgens)--based on the Fourth National Giant Panda Survey.Through the analysis of the maximum entropy model(MAXENT),the group repeats the operation 10 times in bootstrap method,which is appropriate small training set data.The average value of the results is used as the habitat suitability index(HSI)and the yourdon’s indexis taken as the threshold to delineate the habitat patches of each species.Based on the principle of the least cost path,the wildlife habitat connectivity analysis Toolbox Linkage Mapper is adopted to plan the corridors for each species.To plan and construct a multispecies corridor covering the needs of most species corridors,it’s necessary to evaluate the overlap between the giant panda corridor and the sympatric species ones,as well as the umbrella protection effect on the sympatric species by the giant panda corridor based on the Tuowushan giant panda corridor planned by the Forest and Grass Bureau of Sichuan Province.A total of 55 suitable habitat patches are delineated in the study area,with the total habitat area of 274.61 km2 for the red panda,635.81 km2 for the Chinese serow,415.79 km2 for the tufted deer and 1088.51 km2 for the leopard cat.The number of suitable habitat patches for red pandas,Chinese serow,tufted deer,and leopard cats is 8,19,12 and 16 respectively.Among them,leopard cat’s habitat area is both largest and the least fragmented;while the red panda boasts the smallest suitable habitat suffering the worst habitat fragmentation.Based on the suitable habitat patches and resistance layers available to various species,a total of 69 corridors have been planned.Including 11 for red pandas,25 for Chinese serow,12 for tufted deer,and 21 for leopard cats.The overlap between the giant panda corridor in Tuowushan and the sympatric species corridors is very small.Only one corridor of the Chinese serow is covered by the giant panda corridor.There is no overlap between the corridor of the giant pandas in Tuowushan and the corridors of the sympatric species indicating that the direct use of the existing Tuowushan giant panda corridor is inadequate to protect other species.At the same time,the overlapping range of corridors among sympatric species is also very small,so it is difficult to plan a multispecies corridor based on a single species.According to the results,because different species have different ecological needs,if established a multispecies corridor just based on the giant panda corridor priority principle,it cannot satisfied with the corridor needs of sympatric species in the same time.Therefore,it is suggested to plan out a relatively wide-ranging "multispecies corridor area" covering the needs of many species corridors based on the giant panda corridor in Tuowushan.