Drivers of Three Most Charismatic Mammalian Species Distribution across a Multiple-Use Tropical Forest Landscape of Sumatra, Indonesia

Abstract

Simple SummaryCharismatic Sumatran mammals (i.e., the elephant, orangutan, and tiger) play a pivotal role in maintaining ecosystem balance. Nevertheless, these species have encountered multifaceted threats due to habitat disturbances, leading to their potential extinction. Thus, understanding current species ranges, together with investigating the most essential factors for the species, are crucial for developing conservation strategies. We predicted the potential range of three charismatic mammals in Sumatra Island using anthropogenic, biophysical, topographic, and climatic parameters based on ensemble machine learning algorithms. This study also comprehensively describes how land ownerships can shape the existence of these three species. Finally, we provide recommendations based on our findings for species conservation planning and management options.Tropical Rainforest Heritage sites of Sumatra are some of the most irreplaceable landscapes in the world for biodiversity conservation. These landscapes harbor many endangered Asiatic mammals all suffering multifaceted threats due to anthropogenic activities. Three charismatic mammals in Sumatra: Elephas maximus sumatranus, Pongo abelii, and Panthera tigris sumatrae are protected and listed as Critically Endangered (CR) within the IUCN Red List. Nevertheless, their current geographic distribution remains unclear, and the impact of environmental factors on these species are mostly unknown. This study predicts the potential range of those species on the island of Sumatra using anthropogenic, biophysical, topographic, and climatic parameters based on the ensemble machine learning algorithms. We also investigated the effects of habitat loss from current land use, ecosystem availability, and importance of Indonesian protected areas. Our predictive model had relatively excellent performance (Sørensen: 0.81–0.94) and can enhance knowledge on the current species distributions. The most critical environmental predictors for the distribution of the three species are conservation status and temperature seasonality. This study revealed that more than half of the species distributions occurred in non-protected areas, with proportional coverage being 83%, 72%, and 54% for E.m. sumatranus, P. abelii, and P.t. sumatrae, respectively. Our study further provides reliable information on places where conservation efforts must be prioritized, both inside and outside of the protected area networks, to safeguard the ongoing survival of these Indonesian large charismatic mammals.