China – 中国

疆卡拉麦里山有蹄类自然保护区冬季狼的家域
Winter Home Range of Wolves in the Kalamaili Mountain Ungulate Nature Reserve, Xinjiang

端肖楠 初雯雯 王渊 杜聪聪 何雷 初红军
DUAN Xiaonan, CHU Wenwen, WANG Yuan, DU Congcong, HE Lei, CHU Hongjun

要/Abstract

关键词: 狼, 活捕, 家域, GPS项圈, 卡拉麦里山有蹄类自然保护区

Abstract: Understanding wildlife movement and space use is essential for designing effective conservation management strategies. Many top predators, such as wolves (Canis lupus), are elusive and difficult to study. We captured and placed GPS collars on free-ranging male and female grey wolves Canis lupus in the Mount Kalamaili Ungulate Nature Reserve in January and November 2014. We recorded 513 active locations for the adult male and 870 locations for the adult female. Minimum Convex Polygon (MCP) estimated home range sizes of 1947km2 and 3728km2 for the male and female wolf, respectively. On a global scale these preliminary results suggest that wolves persisting in Mount Kalamaili Ungulate Nature Reserve may have the largest home range sizes of any wolf population in the world. Locally, it may demonstrate the need for large-scale management of this key protected landscape as both male and female wolves require vast areas to survive. Further research is urgently required to expand the sample size of collared wolves to increase confidence in home range estimates and to examine any ecological or human-induced effects on habitat selection for this important population of wolves.

f today’s rapid economic development and increasingly strict ecological protection, interactions between humans and wildlife will intensify. Therefore, we need to identify the spatial distribution of such interactions and to take measures to mitigate possible negative interactions. Using the Three-Rivers Source Region as a case study, we combined species habitat suitability, species feeding habits, species conservation levels and human impact intensity to construct a “human-wildlife spatial interaction index” (HWSII) to evaluate the intensity of human-wildlife spatial interactions. The overall level of HWSII was relatively low in the Three-River Source Region. Higher potential human-wildlife interactions occurred in areas with roads and railways. Areas of relatively high interactions between carnivores and livestock were mainly located in the southern part of the study area, and those with relatively high interactions between herbivores and livestock appeared in the western and eastern parts. Managers in these areas should consider mitigation measures. Although developed for a specific region of China, the ‘human-wildlife spatial interaction index’ could have application in other areas of the world for setting a baseline reference to identify areas with the potential for high levels of human-wildlife interactions and pinpoint places where potential negative interactions can be mitigated.