China’s mountain biodiversity and conservation status

Abstract

As global biodiversity continues to decline and ecosystems degrade, mountains are often regarded as crucial refuges for numerous species due to their unique montane environments and relatively unfragmented landscapes. The conservation of mountain biodiversity is a key component of the United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda. Gaining insight into the distribution of montane species and identifying priority conservation areas are essential for effective action. However, such efforts have been relatively limited in China. In this study, we evaluated the contribution of mountains to biodiversity conservation within the country. Our findings indicate that China’s mountains support a remarkable percentage of the country’s wildlife. They include 95 % of mammal species, 85 % of bird species, 89 % of amphibian species, 85 % of reptile species, and 80 % of higher plant species. These areas harbor over 90 % of China’s natural ecosystem subclasses, despite constituting only 65 % of the total land area. Approximately a quarter of important sites for mountain biodiversity are covered by protected areas, but some key regions remain unprotected. It is recommended that protection be prioritized in the southeastern Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, the Hengduan Mountains and the Southeastern China Hills, with a focus on narrowly distributed ecosystems, to achieve the biodiversity target and vision.

Keywords

Mountain / Biodiversity / Ecosystem / Threatened species / Protected area

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Nan Jiang: Writing – original draft, Visualization, Methodology, Formal analysis. Lei Zhao: Validation, Data curation. Mei Han: Validation, Data curation. Weihua Xu: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2022YFF1301400) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences project (Grant No. XDA19050500). We are grateful to Prof. Ainong Li for providing digital mountain map of China.

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