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 primarily responsible for the extinction of Galliformes birds. 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 the causal factors of their extinction and carrying out protection measures appear to be challenging owing to a lack of long-term data with high spatial and temporal resolutions. Here, based on a national field survey, we used habitat suitability models and integrated data on geographical environment, road development, land use, and climate change to predict the potential changes in the distribution and connectivity of the habitat of Reeves's pheasant from 1995 to 2050. Furthermore, ecological corridors were identified using the minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) model. The prioritized areas for habitat restoration were determined by integrating the importance indices of ecological sources and corridors. Our results indicated that both land use and climate change were linked to the increased habitat loss for the Reeves's pheasant. In more recent decades, road construction and land use changes have been linked to a rise in habitat loss, and future climate change has been 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 the survivorship of Reeves's pheasant, we recommend taking immediate actions, including bolstering cooperation among provincial governments, restoring habitats, and creating ecological corridors among important habitats.