Identifying priority conservation landscapes and actions for the Critically Endangered Javan leopard in Indonesia: Conserving the last large carnivore in Java Island.

Autor: Wibisono HT; Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware, United States of America.; Population Sustainability, San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, Escondido, California, United States of America.; Forum HarimauKita, Bogor, West Java, Indonesia., Wahyudi HA; Biodiversity Society, Banyumas, Central Java, Indonesia., Wilianto E; Forum HarimauKita, Bogor, West Java, Indonesia., Pinondang IMR; Fauna & Flora International - Indonesia Programme, Pondok Labu, Jakarta, Indonesia., Primajati M; Fauna & Flora International - Indonesia Programme, Pondok Labu, Jakarta, Indonesia., Liswanto D; Yayasan Titian Lestari, Pontianak, Kalimantan Barat, Indonesia., Linkie M; Wildlife Conservation Society - Indonesia Program, Bogor, West Java, Indonesia.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2018 Jun 27; Vol. 13 (6), pp. e0198369. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Jun 27 (Print Publication: 2018).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198369
Abstrakt: With the extirpation of tigers from the Indonesian island of Java in the 1980s, the endemic and Critically Endangered Javan leopard is the island's last remaining large carnivore. Yet despite this, it has received little conservation attention and its population status and distribution remains poorly known. Using Maxent modeling, we predicted the locations of suitable leopard landscapes throughout the island of Java based on 228 verified Javan leopard samples and as a function of seven environmental variables. The identified landscapes covered over 1 million hectares, representing less than 9% of the island. Direct evidence of Javan leopard was confirmed from 22 of the 29 identified landscapes and included all national parks, which our analysis revealed as the single most important land type. Our study also emphasized the importance of maintaining connectivity between protected areas and human-modified landscapes because adjacent production forests and secondary forests were found to provide vital extensions for several Javan leopard subpopulations. Our predictive map greatly improves those previously produced by the Government of Indonesia's Javan Leopard Action Plan and the IUCN global leopard distribution assessment. It shares only a 32% overlap with the IUCN range predictions, adds six new priority landscapes, all with confirmed presence of Javan leopard, and reveals an island-wide leopard population that occurs in several highly fragmented landscapes, which are far more isolated than previously thought. Our study provides reliable information on where conservation efforts must be prioritized both inside and outside of the protected area network to safeguard Java's last remaining large carnivore.
Competing Interests: Funding for our study was received from the private sector mining company PT Holcim Indonesia. These funds formed part of a technical agreement with Fauna & Flora International (FFI) that was entitled Development of a Biodiversity Conservation Plan for Nusa Kambangan and Holcim’s Mining Zone and ran from April 2010 to March 2011. Here, FFI conducted independent site-based surveys, which included the camera trapping that generated the leopard data for Nusa Kambangan. The funding did not influence the survey or its results in any way. Therefore, this does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Databáze: MEDLINE
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