Why nature preserves important

What is more important for conservation efforts is that more than half suitable areas expanded outside of these two nature reserves.

In general, land use change was predicted to affect pheasants through changes in spatial structure of suitable areas, and land-use and land-cover changes affect local, regional, and global climate processes The greatest threats to terrestrial biodiversity are accelerated climate change and destruction of natural habitats through direct human activities Substantial range contractions and species extinctions were caused by land use change over just the past few decades 8 , 32 , 33 , 34 , As one of the biggest urbanized regions in the world, the development of the JJJ region highly influenced land use and land cover, which directly impact local and regional species.

In our model, we used the changes in vegetation type and human interference instead of land use change. These land use changes have shifted the area of suitable habitat for the threatened eastern populations of Brown Eared-pheasant.

In general, with the development of regional urbanization, land use will continue to change and suitable habitat will disappear with increasing fragmentation and pollution In this region, the total areas of suitable habitat have largely been constant, but much of it lies outside of protect areas.

We found that predicted suitable areas of Brown Eared-pheasant have different change in this two nature reserves. In totally, the suitable habitat has only slightly increased from to since the XNNR and BNNR were established in and , respectively, although fragmentation has decreased.

Local forest management can play an important role in the conservation of threatened species in nature reserve Our work also revealed that land use change, especially vegetation change, may be impacting the conservation of Brown Eared-pheasant in these two nature reserves. In the other hand, nature reserves have played a fundamental role in the conservation of species and benefit for people, which will become even more important in the future 40 , 41 , Habitat fragmentation metrics are critical for assessing the extinction risk and conservation management strategies of threatened species Our study suggested that these two nature reserves may have benefitted populations of the Brown Eared-pheasant by decreasing fragmented habitat.

Our results also showed that the suitable habitat areas enlarged out of the nature reserves Figs. There are two main reasons which caused the results. For the other thing is that Brown Eared-pheasant had a strong dispersal ability, which can help them to adapted to slight fragmented habitat Nature reserves perform multiple roles, including conservation of particular species and biodiversity and conservation of ecosystems Establishing protected areas remains one of the most effective efforts for conserving endangered species, and more than , such areas established worldwide China has many nature reserves established for special endangered species, such as the giant panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca , the tiger Panthera tigris amoyensis , and Brown Eared-pheasant Assessing management effectiveness of nature reserves for endangered species is necessary for policy makers to design conservation schemes.

Our study also suggested that slight frequent personal activities, and human interference in nature reserves is an effectiveness actions in the conservation of endangered species.

The GAP analysis of nature reserves and suitable habitat of Brown Eared-pheasant showed that there are large areas of suitable habitat that fall outside of nature reserves. These results clearly show how we can expand protect lands to aid in conservation of this Brown Eared-pheasant, and potentially many other species as the climate continues to change rapidly.

The boundary of nature reserves should be treat as a whole and not divided by administrative units, which is a common problem in China. Now the China government adopted the guidance on the integration of nature reserve, such as establish national forest parks, to solve above problems in China.

The region JJJ is a large economic region with high human population density activity that can serve as an example for how we can protect and conserve species not only in China, but around the world. These two reserves have mountainous monsoon climates in a warm temperate zone, characterized by a rainy and hot summer and a longer winter; roughly 6.

Occurrence data for Brown Eared-pheasant was obtained from 22 line transects with a total length of Based on previous findings on the habitat preference of this pheasant, we selected 3 different data categories habitat, topographic, and human interference corresponding to 6 environmental variables i.

We then obtained residential areas and roads in and from the basemap which was acquired from Google Earth 49 , which were used to create a Euclidean distance layer of residential areas and roads using ArcGIS The band collection statistics in the Spatial Analyst extension of ArcMap To model and compare the habitat suitability of Brown Eared-pheasant in and , we used a maximum entropy algorithm in MaxEnt ver.

This model has increasingly been used to model species distributions across fragmented landscapes and assess the impacts of habitat fragmentation In order to evaluate the predictive power of the MaxEnt model, we selected the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve AUC 54 to evaluate the predictions using training and test data.

Models were considered potentially useful for AUC values above 0. We used the recommended default MaxEnt settings: convergence threshold 10 —5 , regularization multiplier 1 , maximum number of iterations , and logistic output with suitability values ranging from 0 to 1 During the modeling process, we used jackknife analyses of the regularized gain with training data to examine the importance of predictors We used a new threshold of the average predicted probability of the model-building data to transform the habitat-suitability results into presence—absence distributions 53 , 57 , We used a geographic approach for protection of biodiversity and employed GAP analysis to measure suitable habitat change 59 in ArcGIS Furthermore, we evaluated habitat fragmentation quantitatively and compared it between and using a fragmentation analytical model The amount of suitable habitat Pf and its occurrence in adjacent pixels Pff were calculated within fixed-sized windows surrounding each pixel 53 , Bradshaw, C.

Human population reduction is not a quick fix for environmental problems. Xu, W. Strengthening protected areas for biodiversity and ecosystem services in China. USA , — Kong, L. Habitat conservation redlines for the giant pandas in China. Article Google Scholar. Newbold, T. Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity.

Nature , 45—50 Foley, J. Global consequences of land use. Science , — Pimm, S. Biodiversity: extinction by numbers. Nature , — DeFries, R. Land use change around protected areas: management to balance human needs and ecological function. PubMed Article Google Scholar. Juffe-Bignoli, D. Google Scholar. Schulze, K. An assessment of threats to terrestrial protected areas. Fish and Wildlife Service lists endangered or threatened species of plants and animals in Alabama.

Access to nature provides a constant reminder of the importance of protecting wildlife habitats so future generations can thrive. Fresh air, stunning native plants and flowers, scenic views, and serenity are all great reasons to enjoy a nature preserve near you. Heavily wooded areas are home to a variety of wildlife, including birds, chipmunks, squirrels, and a host of other small animals, all of which may visit your backyard from time to time.

You can make your home friendlier to neighboring plants and animals, by making a few simple changes. Put out feeders for the birds or plant native grasses or plants in your yard.

Plant Zoysiagrass or bahiagrass to keep the deer from grazing on your lawn. They much prefer the sedges and rushes they find in the preserve. Plant native flowers to attract rabbits, foxes, birds, and butterflies. As more and more species face extinction, the work being done to protect wildlife is becoming more and more important. In order to preserve the earth for future generations, we need to reduce the amount of harm that human activities have on the environment. And support the natural world as much as we can.

Everything from tropical forests to our coastline has a part to play in the fight against climate change, as well as protecting our communities. One pretty big reason for conservation work is the impact that it has on human health. Both in preventing the emergence of new diseases, and production of medicines that we rely upon. Having wild habitats for animals serves as a barrier.

It prevents emerging infectious diseases from jumping from animals to humans. Previously undisturbed habitats have been cleared to make way for humans and agriculture. This has brought wild and domestic animals together and helped facilitate the jump of diseases to humans. May 8, at am. Sam says:. May 9, at am.

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