Abstract
Anthropogenic and climatic factors
affect the survival of animal species. Chinese pangolins are a
critically endangered species, and identifying which variables lead to
local extinction events is essential for conservation management. Local
chronicles in China serve as long-term monitoring data, providing a
perspective to disentangle the roles of human impacts and climate
changes in local extinctions. Through a generalized additive model,
extinction risk assessment model and principal component analysis, we
combined information from local chronicles over a period of three
hundred years (1700-2000) and reconstructed environmental data to
determine the causes of local extinctions of the Chinese pangolin in
China. Our results showed that
the extinction probability increased with population growth and climate
warming. An extinction risk assessment indicated that the population and
distribution range of Chinese pangolins has been persistently shrinking
in response to highly intensive human activities (main cause) and
climate warming. Overall, the factors that cause local extinction,
intensive human interference and
drastic climatic fluctuations
induced by global warming, might increase the local extinction rate of
Chinese pangolins. Approximately 25% of extant Chinese pangolins are
confronted with a notable extinction risk (0.36≤extinction
probability≤0.93), specifically those distributed in Southeast China,
including Guangdong, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Hunan, Fujian, Jiangsu and
Taiwan Provinces. To rescue this endangered species, we suggest
strengthening field investigations, identifying the exact distribution
range and population density of Chinese pangolins and further optimizing
the network of nature reserves to improve conservation coverage on the
territory scale. Conservation
practices that concentrate on the viability assessment of scattered
populations could help to improve restoration strategies of the Chinese
pangolin.