Conservation gaps for threatened ungulates in China under human disturbance and climate change.

Abstract

The identification of priority areas and conservation gaps in existing protected areas (PAs) is crucial for conservation of globally threatened species. However, understanding of conservation priorities is generally based on species richness and endemism, often overlooking evolutionary histories, species' functional roles, and the dynamics of all diversity indices relative to human impacts and future climate change. We analyzed the multiple diversity patterns of threatened ungulates in China at a 0.1° resolution under current and future climate scenarios and developed a more comprehensive framework for identifying priority conservation areas. Gross domestic product (GDP), human footprint index (HFP), land use, and climate had the greatest effect on distributions of threatened ungulates. The different facets of biodiversity and their dynamics were inconsistently represented across high-priority conservation areas. Existing PAs poorly represented priority areas based on the 5% highest values for the diversity indices we considered. Coverage of priority areas by PAs ranged from 28.8% to 30.4% under the current scenario alone and under a combination of the current scenario and 2 future scenarios. Only 21.5-22.2% of priority areas in eastern China were covered by PAs under all the scenarios, whereas >91.8% of the areas were threatened by high levels of human impacts. We identified gaps in areas of high priority for conservation of threatened ungulates and PAs in urgent need of strengthening. Our results highlight the importance of considering multiple dimensions of diversity when identifying priority areas for threatened species.