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201528Mar15:22

Habi­tat loss threat­ens the world’s felids

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 28 March 2015 | mod­i­fied 08 April 2015
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Iberian lynxAlmost half of the 36 species of felids that live in the wild in the world are at threat, accord­ing to the Inter­na­tional Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature (IUCN). Yet the lack of stud­ies regard­ing their main threat, the loss and frag­men­ta­tion of their habi­tat, lim­its the estab­lish­ment of effec­tive con­ser­va­tion strate­gies. These are the find­ings of a study which has only been able to find 162 sci­en­tific arti­cles regard­ing this threat which clearly fur­ther endan­gers felid species such as the Iber­ian lynx.

Despite con­ser­va­tion efforts, news on how Iber­ian lynx (Lynx par­di­nus) are hit by vehi­cles on Span­ish roads has been reported. The sta­tus of the most endan­gered felid in the world is hardly improved by the con­tin­ual ‘incur­sions’ into its ter­ri­tory. Ever-​shrinking and broken-​up habi­tats affect the future of the Iber­ian lynx and other wild felid species.

To assess the sit­u­a­tion of the Iber­ian lynx and other felid species that live in the wild on our planet, a team of Brazil­ian and Span­ish sci­en­tists has reviewed the sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture that exists on the main threat for these mam­mals: the loss and frag­men­ta­tion of their habi­tats. The results have been pub­lished in Jan­u­ary in the sci­en­tific jour­nal Oryx.

Although many sci­en­tific stud­ies are pro­duced (last Jan­u­ary, for exam­ple, 60,000 sci­en­tific arti­cles were pub­lished), researchers could only find a total of 162 stud­ies which eval­u­ated threats affect­ing felids.

These fig­ures clearly indi­cate that in gen­eral there is a lack of knowl­edge on this topic [habi­tat loss and frag­men­ta­tion], which espe­cially affects felid conservation.
Fran­cisco Palo­mares, co-​author, depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion Biol­ogy at the Doñana Bio­log­i­cal Sta­tion (CSIC) »

With­out proper sci­en­tific knowl­edge it is hard to set up effec­tive con­ser­va­tion strate­gies,” said Fran­cisco Palo­mares. Accord­ing to the new study, the main rea­sons for the lim­ited infor­ma­tion on the effect of habi­tat loss and frag­men­ta­tion for felid con­ser­va­tion are “the lack of both financ­ing for research and com­mu­ni­ca­tion between man­agers and researchers,” high­lights Palomares.

North Amer­ica and Europe gen­er­ate the great­est amount of research on the effect of habi­tat loss on felids. How­ever, in view of the lack of research in cer­tain coun­tries with less eco­nomic resources, the real effect of this threat is still unknown for 16 species of felids. This is the case for the Andean moun­tain cat (Leop­ar­dus jaco­bita), the Bornean bay cat (Pard­ofe­lis badia), the flat-​headed cat (Pri­on­ail­u­rus plan­i­ceps), and the fish­ing cat (Pri­on­ail­u­rus viver­ri­nus), that are in dan­ger of extinc­tion and for whom there are very few stud­ies and con­ser­va­tion measures.


Con­ser­va­tion of the Iber­ian lynx, an exem­plary model

Among those on which there is lit­tle sci­en­tific infor­ma­tion is the Iber­ian lynx, the most threat­ened felid, and which is con­sid­ered crit­i­cally endan­gered accord­ing to the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species.

How­ever, in accor­dance with our review of sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture, it is a model species and exem­plary in eval­u­at­ing the effect of habi­tat loss and frag­men­ta­tion,” the researcher points out, who adds that there is sci­en­tific data to help to develop suc­cess­ful con­ser­va­tion plans for the species.

As the Iber­ian lynx lives in the Mediter­ranean scrub­land, its habi­tat needs pro­tect­ing. “As well as suit­able veg­e­ta­tion, there must be sig­nif­i­cant rab­bit pop­u­la­tions,” adds Palo­mares. This lynx’s con­ser­va­tion strat­egy con­sists of con­nect­ing iso­lated pop­u­la­tions through eco­log­i­cal cor­ri­dors, but the infor­ma­tion pro­vided through local and regional pop­u­la­tion via­bil­ity mod­els for short and longer time peri­ods also helps.

The team of researchers high­lights the need to tackle at least the fol­low­ing three areas of research for the rest of the felids:

dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing habi­tat loss from the effects of frag­men­ta­tion using the­o­ret­i­cal sce­nar­ios;

select­ing pri­or­ity areas for con­ser­va­tion;

analysing the con­se­quences of habi­tat loss.

Felid con­ser­va­tion­ists must start to design more the­o­ret­i­cal projects and apply the new tools and method­olo­gies avail­able in research on land­scape and wildlife,” con­cludes the study.



(Source: SiNC news release, 23.03.2015)


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