Optimizing protected areas to boost the conservation of key protected wildlife in China

Current geographic range maps for List of Key Protected Animals in China under 1988 and 2021. Among them, mammals and amphibians were sourced from the IUCN. Mammal ranges were supplemented using data from the book “China’s Mammal Diversity and Geographic Distribution”, and data on amphibians was supplemented by the “Colored Atlas of Chinese Amphibians and Their Distributions”. Range maps for birds were digitalized from “A Field Guide to the Birds of China”, and supplemented by BirdLife International. Reptile range maps were taken from Roll et al.2017. We were unable to find range maps for 12 species in List 1988 and 1 species in List 2021; thus, they were excluded from this study. In total, we collected range maps of 341 species in the List 1988 and 665 species in the List 2021. <br> Because the range maps often contained unsuitable habitats, we refined the potential area of habitat for each species based on specific distribution data, elevational range, and vegetation types. Ecological requirements based on elevation and vegetation type for each species are from the Scientific Database of the IUCN Red List and published literature, and also from the database of Chinese amphibians (Amphibia China http://www.amphibiachina.org/). Elevational data was extracted using the 90-meter Digital Elevation Model from the NASA Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (https://cgiarcsi.community/data/srtm-90m-digital-elevation-database-v4-1/), and vegetation data were extracted from the global land cover map GlobCover 2009.