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Habitat suitability for a community of Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) and their prey in Changbaishan

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Abstract

The Changbaishan reserve and the forests around it are one of the priority areas for Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) recovery in northeastern China. Previous habitat suitability analyses only took the ecological requirements of tigers into consideration, so this study aims to determine habitat suitability for a tiger-prey community in the region, by analysing ungulate prey availability and habitat suitability for both predator and prey. Three prey species were found, using the snow tacking method: red deer (Cervus canadensis xanthopygus), wild boar (Sus scrofa), and roe deer (Capreolus pygargus). Habitat suitability was evaluated for tigers, red deer, and wild boar, using a multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) process. MCE results showed that (1) habitat suitability is generally low outside the reserve for all three species; (2) suitability values were the lowest for tigers due to high intensity of human impact in the area, with suitable habitat restricted to the centre of the reserve; and (3) red deer and wild boar would find pockets of suitable habitat outside the reserve. A combination of low forest quality and high human impact intensity imposes significant environmental pressure to those ungulates. To recover tiger population in Changbaishan, forest quality and human impacts should be properly managed, which should increase prey availability.

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Acknowledgements

This project was carried out with great support from Tsinghua University and Professor Xuehua Liu's research lab, and with invaluable support from the Changbai Mountain Academy of Sciences.

Availability of data

All data can be obtained with Felipe Perez (main author) upon reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, and School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Haidian District, Beijing, 100084, China

    Felipe Perez & Xuehua Liu

  2. Jilin Changbai Mountain Academy of Sciences, Antu County, Jilin, Province, 133613, People’s Republic of China

    Zhengji Piao

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  1. Felipe Perez
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  2. Zhengji Piao
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  3. Xuehua Liu
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Contributions

All authors (Felipe Perez, Zhengji Piao, and Xuehua Liu) contributed to the study conception and design. Research, material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by FP. ZP participated in field data collection. The first draft of the manuscript was written by FP, and XL commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All aforementioned authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xuehua Liu.

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Perez, ., Piao, Z. & Liu, X. Habitat suitability for a community of Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica) and their prey in Changbaishan. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 12249–12260 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16469-8

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