Hanie Faghihi; Bagher Nezami; Bahman Shams-Esfandabad; Rahman Eshaghi; Mehdi Kia Heyrati; Said Ghomi
Abstract
Red Deer is the largest native deer in Iran. The species distribution is restricted to only some core zones of protected areas of the country. The most important factors in the decline of the population of the species are the destruction and fragmentation of its habitat, overhunting, and poaching which ...
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Red Deer is the largest native deer in Iran. The species distribution is restricted to only some core zones of protected areas of the country. The most important factors in the decline of the population of the species are the destruction and fragmentation of its habitat, overhunting, and poaching which are strongly influenced by human activities. Therefore, modeling and identifying breeding habitats in the remaining suitable areas can help conservation managers to protect the remaining populations of this species. The core zone of the Central Alborz Protected Area is the most important core area for breeding Red Deer. In this study, we investigated the species habitat selection by the ecological niche factor analysis method. The results in the ENFA method with values of 1.3 marginalities and specialty 5.5 indicate habitat areas with higher slopes and dem than the average which has low tolerability, are preferred by the species. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the protection of the region is an important factor to conserve the species.
Masoud Yousefi; Bagher Nezami; Amir Abdoos; Bahramali Zaheri; Ahmad Radman; Negar Najafi Siavashan
Abstract
Birds provide important ecosystem services, but they face several threats like climate change, land-use change, and illegal hunting. Protected areas are important tools for the conservation of avian diversity however their avian diversity and distribution poorly studied in Iran. In this study, we present ...
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Birds provide important ecosystem services, but they face several threats like climate change, land-use change, and illegal hunting. Protected areas are important tools for the conservation of avian diversity however their avian diversity and distribution poorly studied in Iran. In this study, we present the result of our field observations of avifauna and breeding birds of Touran National Park, Semnan province between 2019 and 2021. We recorded 92 bird species in the national park and confirmed the breeding status of 33 species, some of which, namely Eastern Imperial Eagle, Asian Houbara Bustard, and European roller are threatened. Eastern Imperial Eagle and Asian Houbara Bustard are listed on Annex I of CITES and Eurasian Kestrel and Merlin are listed on Annex I of CITES. Diversity of bird of prey, breeding of the Persian Ground Jay and Houbara Bustard in the desert and semi-arid steppe ecosystems are some of the remarkable values of the Touran National Park. According to the field surveys, the presence of large numbers of domestic animals around the Park and the trampling of bird nests, the high number of domestic camels, and successive droughts are the most important avian threats in the Touran National Park.
Marya Madadi; Bagher Nezami; Mohammad Kaboli; Hamid Reza Rezaei
Abstract
Today, human and wildlife conflict, especially big carnivores such as brown bear, is one of the most challenges and difficulties in biodiversity conservation. Increasing the conflicts have resulted in increasing the negative attitude of local people toward the wildlife and as a result of that leads to ...
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Today, human and wildlife conflict, especially big carnivores such as brown bear, is one of the most challenges and difficulties in biodiversity conservation. Increasing the conflicts have resulted in increasing the negative attitude of local people toward the wildlife and as a result of that leads to increasing poaching of carnivores, especially in an area such as Mazandaran Province which has a high density of human and wildlife. We conducted this study by identifying the area with a high conflicts between the bear and human and human assets in Mazandaran Province. Moreover, we used field observation data to diagnose the distribution of mountainous areas which are potentially exposed to bear attacks in the Province. We collected the bear damages data by questionnaire form and field surveys. Biogeoclimatic variables which were used in the analyses are elevation, distance to the village, the density of beehives, human footprint, the density of domestic animals and land use. We recorded 150 bear attacks to human and human properties which include 16 to human, 19 to domestic animals, 67 and 48 destruction of fruit gardens and beehives, respectively. According to the results, most conflicts are in the spring and autumn. The most important variables are elevation, distance to village and fruit gardens. According to the results, human-bear conflicts in the Mazandaran Province are in the elevation range between 150 to 3000 m. On the other hand, fruit gardens around the villages have a key role in attracting bears to human settlements.
Farzaneh Kermani; Mohammad Reza Ahmadi Dastjerdi; Bagher Nezami; Mansoure Mohammadi Mayab
Abstract
Wild Sheep is one of the ungulate, which lives in mountainous and hilly areas. This species is one of the main preys of cheetah in the Central Plateau of Iran, after a sharp decline in Gazelle and Jebeer population in Iran. Hence, in this study, the identification of the suitable habitats for Wild sheep ...
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Wild Sheep is one of the ungulate, which lives in mountainous and hilly areas. This species is one of the main preys of cheetah in the Central Plateau of Iran, after a sharp decline in Gazelle and Jebeer population in Iran. Hence, in this study, the identification of the suitable habitats for Wild sheep in the central Iranian plateau was studied as the selected areas for the conservation of Asiatic cheetah. The species desirability habitat modeling was performed by using nine models in the Biomod2 package. The results showed that in all models, distance from water resources, distance from village, mines, fields, and slopes were the most important variables and country that elevation and road as the least important variables. Half of the species desirable area located outside of the protected areas boundaries. Due to high overlap of Wild Sheep presence and Asiatic Cheetah presence in the central of the country, its habitat management has a direct positive effect on the cheetah conservation.
Bagher Nezami
Abstract
Studying on the species diversity and evaluating the variation of it during different years has had very important role in identifying the changes and weak wildlife management. In this survey we did a study on species diversity and population variation of terrestrial bird of Parvar Protected Area in ...
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Studying on the species diversity and evaluating the variation of it during different years has had very important role in identifying the changes and weak wildlife management. In this survey we did a study on species diversity and population variation of terrestrial bird of Parvar Protected Area in Semnan province during a year. Parvar Protected Area is one of the critical habitats which have the capability of promoting a higher level of Iran protected areas category as a national park. Climate variation has led to species diversity and we could identify more than one fourth of the bird species existing in the whole country. North and northwest forests of Parvar which are the borders of Iranian Hircanian forests and Irano-touranian climate in the east and southeast where have resulted in the high species richness. We identified 161 bird species belonging to 13 orders. The most known bird species are related to the summer with 2063 pieces. 47 species are native, 21 species were identified in nesting season, 18 species were identified in winter and others were passing species. Passeriformes were dominant by 68% and Falconiformes were about 13%. We could identify only one water bird, Common Teal, and two shore birds during the study period.
Bagher Nezami; Farhad Ataei; Anooshe Kafash; Afshin Alizadeh Shaabani; Rahman Eshaghi; Rahman Naeimaei
Volume 6, Issue 3 , March 2018, , Pages 127-141
Abstract
The main goals of this research are predicting the suitable habitat distribution, identifying habitat selection of brown bear and the main effective factors in Central Alborz Protected Area on spring and summer when they have yearling cubs. Identifying core areas, as source populations, have a key role ...
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The main goals of this research are predicting the suitable habitat distribution, identifying habitat selection of brown bear and the main effective factors in Central Alborz Protected Area on spring and summer when they have yearling cubs. Identifying core areas, as source populations, have a key role to conserve of the species. The results are showed as a predicted map of suitable habitat patches distribution and priority of influence factors, according to the species fundamental niche. The required data are a set of species occurrence coordinates (presence points) according to the field observations and study areas’ environmental parameters layers. In this study we used Maximum Entropy Model for habitat modeling in central Alborz protected area. The presence data were gather from field surveys. The AUC values is 0.89 indicating good performance of the model. Jackknife graph showed that annual precipitation is the most effective parameter and vegetation is the most individual parameter. The predicted habitat of species showed a seasonal pattern of distribution. This results can be used to manage and conserve species in suitable habitats according to the species response to the environmental factors
