Reconstructing the historical distribution of the Amur Leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) in Northeast China based on historical records

Xiaofeng Luan,Wei Zhang,Zhe Jiang,Mujiao Huang,Li Yang,Rui Zhang,Yueheng Ren,Lv Jiang

doi:10.3897/zookeys.592.6912

Abstract

The range of the Amur leopard (Panthera pardus orientalis) has decreased dramatically over the last 100 years. This species is still under extreme risk of extinction and conservation efforts are rigorous. Understanding the long-term dynamics of the population decline would be helpful to offer insight into the mechanism behind the decline and endangerment and improve conservation perspectives and strategies. Historical data collection has been the challenge for reconstructing the historical distribution. In China, new gazetteers having systematic compilation and considerable local ecological data can be considered as an important complementary for reconstruction. Therefore, we have set up a data set (mainly based on the new gazetteers) in order to identify the historical range of the Amur Leopard from the 1950s to 2014. The result shows that the Amur leopard was historically widely distributed with large populations in Northeastern China, but it presented a sharp decline after the 1970s. The decline appeared from the plains to the mountains and northeast to southwest since the 1950s. Long-term historical data, mainly from new gazetteers, demonstrates that such resources are capable of tracking species change through time and offers an opportunity to reduce data shortage and enhance understanding in conservation.

Highlights

Long-term historical data would offer insight into understanding the ecological and biogeographic characteristics of population decline, and help develop predictive power for conservation management (Boakes et al 2010; Chapron et al 2014; Rondinini and Visconti 2015; Turvey et al 2015)
Combining new gazetteers, which regularly have Amur leopard records, with historical information from literature, news and scientific surveys, we identified the range of the Amur leopard in Northeast China from the 1950s to the 1990s
In the 1950s, 96.4% of total records came from new gazetteers. 36.2% of the new gazetteers records were confirmed by fauna and papers. 97.5%, 96.3% and 93.9% of total records came from new gazetteers in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s respectively. 42.4%, 41.2%, and 54.0% of the new gazetteers records were confirmed by fauna, papers and nature reserve scientific surveys in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s respectively

Summary

Introduction

Long-term historical data would offer insight into understanding the ecological and biogeographic characteristics of population decline, and help develop predictive power for conservation management (Boakes et al 2010; Chapron et al 2014; Rondinini and Visconti 2015; Turvey et al 2015). For the records from field surveys, museums and papers, new gazetteers may have been neglected for a long time. This may be seen as reasonable, because new gazetteers are only concerned with species which are economic, unique or common. Highlights that this resource can provide effective records for reconstructing long-term population dynamics (Turvey et al 2015; Zhang et al 2016). In this case, we suggest that new gazetteers can be an irreplaceable source for conservation biology resources

Methods

Results

Conclusion