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Relationship between human disturbance and Endangered giant panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca habitat use in the Daxiangling Mountains C HENG Z HAO,BISONG Y UE,JIANGHONG R AN,TIMOTHY M OERMOND,NING H OU X UYU Y ANG and X IAODONG G U Abstract The Endangered giant panda Ailuropoda melano- Introduction leuca is one of the most threatened mammals. The species he giant panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca is one of the has experienced declines in its population and habitat as a Tmost threatened mammals and is categorized as result of human disturbance. We investigated the influence Endangered on the IUCN Red List (Lu et al., ). The spe- of human disturbance on habitat use by giant pandas in the cies was widely distributed in south-western China, includ- ’ Daxiangling Mountains, in China s Sichuan Province. We ing Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, Shanxi, and Gansu Provinces, mapped all signs of giant panda and all locations of seven during the –th centuries (Hu, ), but as a result of types of human disturbance in the study area. We used cor- extensive expansion of agriculture and transport systems relation analysis, generalized linear models, and Akaike in- and the widespread destruction and fragmentation of forest formation criteria to analyse the influence of the various habitat, giant pandas are now confined to six fragmented types of human disturbances on habitat use by the giant mountain areas at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau (Fig. ; panda. Our results showed that habitat use was positively Hu, ; Ran et al., ). The smallest population is in correlated with elevation and distance from roads, resi- the Daxiangling Mountains, where the species remains crit- dences, hydropower stations and logging or tree-felling ically threatened by human disturbance (State Forestry sites, but negatively correlated with distance from bamboo Administration of China, ). shoot collection sites and trap sites. We found that the Understanding how various human activities affect road-effect zone spanned a distance of c. , m and that pandas and their populations is critical for effective man- human residence could affect the intensity of habitat use agement and conservation of this charismatic species. by giant pandas at distances , m. The effect of Human activities are known to affect wildlife in many roads on habitat use was probably influenced by the associ- ways. Roads alter habitat and result in habitat loss and ation of roads with residences, hydropower stations and fragmentation, consequently reducing genetic exchange mines. In the area occupied by giant pandas, we recommend among populations (Way, ; Andrews, ;Carretal., increased regulation to minimize the expansion and impact ;Zhuetal.,, ;Qietal.,). Hunting or trap- of roads, residences, hydropower stations and logging ping can have a significant impact on local populations; activities. for example, in Beichuan county c. giant pandas Keywords Ailuropoda melanoleuca, China, Daxiangling were hunted each year before hunting of the species was Mountains, Endangered, giant panda, human disturbance, prohibited by law in (Hu & Hu, ). Logging protection leads to fragmentation and loss of forest habitat (Van Dyke et al., ). To view supplementary material for this article, please visit Two types of disturbance effects over distance may be http://dx.doi.org/ . /S identified, one sharply defined by a threshold and the other characterized by a gradual influence over distance from the disturbance until some distance beyond which an effect cannot be detected (Eigenbrod et al., ). The ef- fects of some types of disturbances are more pervasive than others, species may respond in various ways (Cuaron, ), and some disturbances may result in non-intuitive impacts, all of which makes it difficult to disentangle the in- CHENG ZHAO,BISONG YUE,JIANGHONG RAN (Corresponding author), TIMOTHY MOERMOND and NING HOU Key Laboratory of Bio-resources and Eco-environ- dividual effects of various types of disturbances, particularly ment (Ministry of Education), and Sichuan Key Laboratory of Conservation as they may be occurring at the same time (Previtali et al., Biology on Endangered Wildlife, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China. E-mail [email protected] ). In the case of the giant panda the influence of various types of disturbances have been investigated individually (Li XUYU YANG and XIAODONG GU Sichuan Wildlife Resource Survey and Conservation Management Station, Chengdu, China et al., ; Ran et al., ; Bearer et al., ; Zeng et al., Received December . Revision requested February . ; Gong et al., ) but it is difficult to develop an effect- Accepted June . First published online April . ive comprehensive protection plan for the species on this Oryx, 2017, 51(1), 146–152 © 2016 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605315000800 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.22, on 28 Sep 2021 at 19:09:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605315000800 Giant panda habitat use 147 FIG. 1 Areas of suitable habitat for the giant panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca, and reserves established to protect the species in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, China. basis, as any reserve or protected area is likely to be affected by various disturbances at the same time. To understand the influence of human disturbance on giant pandas more clearly and to assist managers to design more effective protection plans we studied the relationship between human disturbance and habitat use by giant pandas in the Daxiangling Mountains. Our goals were to determine which types of human disturbance have greater impacts on the habitat use of giant pandas; to study how the impacts of disturbance on habitat use vary with distance from a dis- FIG. 2 (a) The locations of giant panda signs and roads and (b) turbance; and to improve protection plans for the giant human disturbance in the study area in the Daxiangling Mountains (Fig. ), Sichuan, China. panda based on greater understanding of the impacts of various types of human disturbances. Methods Study area The study area was surveyed by investigators during May−September . We divided the area into Fieldwork was carried out in the Daxiangling Mountains, -km squares, and in each square investigators followed a which lie along a north-west–south-east axis in the south- transect of . km, searching for signs of giant pandas west of the Sichuan Basin (Fig. ). The highest peak is (e.g. faeces, signs of feeding), which were geographically re- , m. The climate is humid, annual rainfall is typically ferenced using a global positioning system (GPS). At each ,–, mm and the mean annual temperature is location where sign of giant panda was found, elevation, c. °C. Below , m elevation the vegetation is mainly slope and slope aspect were recorded. GPS readings were broad-leaved forest, at ,–, m it is mainly mixed for- also recorded at all locations of human disturbance (resi- est, and . , m it is primarily coniferous forest (Hu, dences, mines, hydropower stations, logging and tree-felling ). sites, trap sites and bamboo shoot collection sites). The lo- As giant pandas and their habitat mainly occur above cations of all roads used by four-wheeled vehicles were ob- , m(Hu,), the study area was initially defined as tained from government maps and Google Earth (Google the area . , m. To ensure our study area contained all Inc., Mountain View, USA; Fig. a; Supplementary potential habitat of the giant panda, it was expanded to in- Table S). We treated the road system as one type of disturb- clude all areas within , m of giant panda sign (Fig. ), as ance, as all of the roads within the study area had analogous the diameter of the panda’s home range is c. , m(Hu& characteristics (Supplementary Table S). Our study was Hu, ). In the Daxiangling Mountains the main human part of the th national survey on the giant panda disturbances are roads, residences, hydropower stations, (Forestry Administration of China, unpubl. data). logging, collection of bamboo shoots, trapping and mining We analysed the influence of human disturbance on (Supplementary Table S;Hu,; Ran et al., ; State habitat use by giant pandas in two stages. Firstly, we inves- Forestry Administration of China, ; Xu et al., ). tigated which types of human disturbance have clearly Oryx, 2017, 51(1), 146–152 © 2016 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605315000800 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.22, on 28 Sep 2021 at 19:09:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605315000800 148 C. Zhao et al. detectable influences on the habitat use of giant pandas. hydropower stations, logging or tree-felling sites, bam- Secondly, we investigated how the influence of the main boo shoot collection sites and trap sites (Fig. ). types of disturbance on the intensity of habitat use by The activity intensity of giant pandas correlated positive- giant pandas varied as the distance from the disturbance ly with elevation and distance from logging or tree-felling increased. sites, hydropower stations, residences and roads, and nega- We used kernel density analysis in ArcGIS v.. (ESRI, tively with distance from bamboo shoot collection sites and Redlands, USA) to calculate a density value for each sign of trap sites (i.e. the habitat used by giant pandas was far from giant panda, which we used to represent the giant panda’s roads and residences but close to bamboo shoot collection activity intensity. This could also be treated as an index of sites and trap sites). There was also a positive correlation be- habitat use intensity. For each giant panda sign we used dis- tween distance from roads and distance to mines, hydro- tance analysis in ArcGIS to calculate the distance of the sign power stations and residences (Table ). from the nearest road, residence, mine, hydropower station, We evaluated AIC values for candidate models.