Abstract
BackgroundSoutheast Asian deforestation rates are among the world’s highest and threaten to drive many forest-dependent species to extinction. Climate change is expected to interact with deforestation to amplify this risk. Here we examine whether regional incentives for sustainable forest management will be effective in improving threatened mammal conservation, in isolation and when combined with global climate change mitigation.Methodology/Principal FindingsUsing a long time-series of orangutan nest counts for Sabah (2000–10), Malaysian Borneo, we evaluated the effect of sustainable forest management and climate change scenarios, and their interaction, on orangutan spatial abundance patterns. By linking dynamic land-cover and downscaled global climate model projections, we determine the relative influence of these factors on orangutan spatial abundance and use the resulting statistical models to identify habitat crucial for their long-term conservation. We show that land-cover change the degradation of primary forest had the greatest influence on orangutan population size. Anticipated climate change was predicted to cause reductions in abundance in currently occupied populations due to decreased habitat suitability, but also to promote population growth in western Sabah by increasing the suitability of presently unoccupied regions.Conclusions/SignificanceWe find strong quantitative support for the Sabah government’s proposal to implement sustainable forest management in all its forest reserves during the current decade; failure to do so could result in a 40 to 80 per cent regional decline in orangutan abundance by 2100. The Sabah orangutan is just one (albeit iconic) example of a forest-dependent species that stands to benefit from sustainable forest management, which promotes conservation of existing forests.
Highlights
It has been long recognized that deforestation, conversion of primary or secondary forests to agricultural and other land-use types, is the biggest threat to insular Southeast Asia’s biodiversity [1,2]
We develop a framework to examine the consequences of future Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) implementation scenarios on the long-term persistence of Sabah’s orangutan population
The optimized saturated hurdle model could not be simplified without loss of predictive and explanatory power (Table 3), suggesting that current-day orangutan distribution and abundance is affected by climate, habitat and anthropogenic factors
Summary
It has been long recognized that deforestation, conversion of primary or secondary forests to agricultural and other land-use types, is the biggest threat to insular Southeast Asia’s biodiversity [1,2]. Despite knowledge that deforestation results in population extirpation and even species’ extinction, the rate of deforestation in insular Southeast Asia remains among the highest in the world [3]. The potential for a massive extinction event in Southeast Asia is high [2], especially if habitat loss acts synergistically with other increasingly important extinction drivers, such as climate change [4]. Evaluating the long-term consequences of regional deforestation and its interaction with global climate change in a spatial context is a challenging yet important exercise. We describe a framework to evaluate the relative influences of land-cover and climate change on the future spatial abundance of threatened populations and prioritise individual habitat patches to maximize the probability of their long-term persistence. Southeast Asian deforestation rates are among the world’s highest and threaten to drive many forestdependent species to extinction. We examine whether regional incentives for sustainable forest management will be effective in improving threatened mammal conservation, in isolation and when combined with global climate change mitigation
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