Identifying priority core habitats and corridors for effective conservation of brown bears in Iran

Abstract

Iran lies at the southernmost range limit of brown bears globally. Therefore, understanding the habitat associations and patterns of population connectivity for brown bears in Iran is relevant for the species’ conservation. We applied species distribution modeling to predict habitat suitability and connectivity modeling to identify population core areas and corridors. Our results showed that forest density, topographical roughness, NDVI and human footprint were the most influential variables in predicting brown bear distribution. The most crucial core areas and corridor networks for brown bear are concentrated in the Alborz and Zagros Mountains. These two core areas were predicted to be fragmented into a total of fifteen isolated patches if dispersal of brown bear across the landscape is limited to 50,000 cost units, and aggregates into two isolated habitat patches if the species is capable of dispersing 400,000 cost units. We found low overlap between corridors, and core habitats with protected areas, suggesting that the existing protected area network may not be adequate for the conservation of brown bear in Iran. Our results suggest that effective conservation of brown bears in Iran requires protection of both core habitats and the corridors between them, especially outside Iran’s network of protected areas.

Habitat suitability and connectivity implications for the conservation of the Persian leopard along the Iran–Iraq border

“…Structural connectivity (hereafter, connectivity) modeling was carried out by using Universal Corridor (UNICOR) software (Landguth et al., 2012 ) and two sets of connectivity predictions consisting of (1) resistant kernels and (2) factorial least‐cost paths. Resistant kernels are an algorithm that calculates the resistance cost‐weighted dispersal around each source point up to a dispersal threshold defined by the user (Compton et al., 2007 ; Mohammadi et al., 2021 ). An incidence function of the rate of organism movement through every pixel in the landscape was provided as a function of the density and number of source points, the dispersal ability of the species, and the resistance of the landscape (Cushman et al., 2013 ).…”

“…Large carnivores are sensitive to habitat fragmentation due to their vast home range and often low population density (Calvignac et al., 2009 ; Mohammadi et al., 2021 ; Noss et al., 1996 ). Therefore, they could be considered the focal species in the landscape (Almasieh et al., 2016 ; Beier et al., 2008 ).…”

“…The Persian leopard is a mobile species and therefore, its survival chance is highly dependent on the rate of conservation management in its natural habitats, particularly along the political borders (Hosseini et al., 2019 ). In addition, the conservation of the Persian leopard depends on the accurate detection of the core habitats and their connectivity (Mohammadi et al., 2021 ). Due to special conditions of political borders, with proper use of HSMs and even by the limited extensive field surveys, the prediction of core habitats and corridors of the Persian leopard could be conducted.…”

Brown bear and Persian leopard attacks on humans in Iran

“…Brown bear incidents occurred more frequently in western provinces which contain the Zagros Mountains. Brown bears are more common in western provinces of Iran [58]. Furthermore, about 36% of Iran's rural and nomadic families as well as 52% of all livestock occur in the Zagros region [59].…”

Landscape connectivity for two sympatric carnivores in central Iran

“…Understanding the different factors that affect species distribution and habitat selection is important for carnivore conservation (Khosravi et al, 2018;Shahnaseri et al, 2019;Mohammadi et al, 2021). Many other habitat suitability models are available.…”