Insights on the role of forest cover and on the changes in forest cover on thirty-five endangered mammal species distributions

Abstract The changes in forest cover can determine the survival of terrestrial endangered mammal species in the wild. This study assessed the impacts of forest cover changes on endangered mammal species distribution at global scale aiming to understand how the changes in forest cover may have impacted the distributions of 35 endangered small and large-body terrestrial mammals. There were used forest data obtained from time-series analyses of Landsat images between 2000 and 2014, species occurrence records collected by observations between 2000 and 2015 of Global Biodiversity Information Facility and species range data of International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN) of the year 2015, to test the ‘natural and resource conditions’ hypothesis. Hypothesis on ‘natural and resource conditions’ produced models with high prediction accuracy of above 70 percent for 88 percent of 35 species models. The changes in forest cover explained species occurrences in 10 percent of all species models. In average, 59 percent of species occurrence records overlapped with species range data. The 51 percent of all species had no occurrence records between 2000 and 2015. Species and forest data collection as well as transnational cooperation for conservation of species roaming in the wild in upland forested areas and in cross-border areas may be critical for endangered mammal species conservation.