News | Tuesday, 15th March 2022
Congratulations to Wang Jun for defending his PhD on snow leopard distribution
EERC student completes doctoral research surveying the rare top predators
Congratulations to EERC doctoral student Wang Jun for successfully defending his PhD entitled “A multiscale assessment of snow leopard distribution, habitat-use and landscape connectivity in a new national park in China”.
Snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are the top predators in alpine and subalpine meadows. They are an umbrella species of high-altitude ecosystems and are recognized as indicators of healthy ecosystems. The newly established Qilian Mountain National Park (QMNP), with an area of 50,200 km2, was one of the first ten pilot areas of the revised national park system in China. The snow leopard is an important flagship species of the QMNP, although only sporadic field surveys have been conducted in the region since 2011. This lack of data has impeded the improvement of conservation and management planning and practice of the national parks.
This research used data collected from multiple surveys with spatial and temporal variance and employed the latest data analysis algorithms to explore snow leopard distribution, activity, and habitat patches in the national park. The results are an important contribution to the conservation and management planning of QMNP and surrounding areas.
The supervisory team comprised Dr Martin Jones (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Dr Philip Riordan (Marwell Wildlife, and University of Southampton).
Project partners and external collaborators included Beijing Forestry University, Eco-Bridge Continental, Marwell Wildlife, Yanchiwan National Nature Reserve Administration, Gansu Province, China, and Qilian Mountain National Park Administration.
This project was supported by National Forestry and Grassland Administration of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China. The project team thank the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) of the University of Oxford providing the WildCRU Scholar Supported by the Recanati‐Kaplan Centre Felid Conservation Programme from 2014 to 2017.
