Urbanization has led to the loss, fragmentation, and degradation of habitats, as well as that of biodiversity in cities. Urban parks play a key role in conserving biodiversity. Despite the advantages of complex vegetation structures for insect and bird diversity, a simple vegetation structure is favored in urban parks worldwide. The trade-off between human recreation and biodiversity conservation is challenging. Zoning strategy may be an effective countermeasure informed by the national park and natural scenic area; a zoning-based solution was introduced in this study, including preserved core zones and surrounding recreation zones. Guangyanggu Urban Forest Park was found to be advantageous for biodiversity and in terms of the feasibility of a small hierarchical forest patch (HFP) in the center of Beijing, which can serve as a model for core zones. The park had higher species richness of plants, insects, and birds than did six control sample parks. The Gleason richness indices of insect and bird species significantly correlated with the ratio of multilayered vegetation area to total sample area (r = 0.757 and 0.867 respectively; p < 0.05). The HFP mosaic model was used to develop the core zone in the urban park. Nine scenarios were defined for the HFP mosaic pattern, quantitatively delineating the typical spatial patterns of HFPs in parks. These results will improve the design and management of the current urban park paradigm. A bio-friendly park model characterized by HFP can optimize professional designing and maintenance guidelines for future urban parks.
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