Estimating the 15th-Century Potential Habitats of Endangered Mammals on the Korean Peninsula: Implications for Restoration

Understanding the past distribution is valuable reference information for restoring endangered species that lack current suitable habitat information. We, thus, estimated the 15th-century potential habitats of critically endangered mammals at the genus level on the Korean Peninsula with a historical document: big cats (Panthera spp.), including tigers and leopards, foxes (Vulpes spp.), bears (Ursus spp.), and gorals (Naemorhedus spp.). For this, we mapped the district-based mammals' habitats using the tribute records of local mammalian products in Sejong Silok jiriji, a historical document written in the 1400s on a peninsula scale. The habitats of all mammal genera mainly included the Baekdudaegan mountain range, stretching from North to South Korea, and were commonly found in the two provinces of North Korea: Hamgyung-do and Pyungan-do. Especially, foxes showed the peninsula-wide habitat distribution, including non-forest areas. The common characteristics of their habitats were high-altitude mountainous areas with steep slopes and rugged topography. Contrary to the current limited ranges of the corresponding mammal species on the Korean Peninsula, especially in South Korea, the 1400s estimations showed peninsula-wide distributions of the four mammal genera. Despite several limitations of historical documents, such as presence-only administrative and genus-level information, estimating mammals' habitats using historical records is a novel and important approach, highlighting the value of these records in understanding past mammals' habitat distributions and characteristics. Our results provide valuable reference information for the restoration and conservation practices of the four critically endangered mammals, with limited knowledge of their suitable habitat conditions in the Republic of Korea.