Local chronicles reveal the effect of anthropogenic and climatic impacts on local extinctions of Chinese pangolins in China

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 lead to the successful restoration of the Chinese pangolin population.