However, no monitoring, conservation or management activities can be effectively conducted without sufficient knowledge of the crane’s distribution 14, especially the locations of its breeding habitats that directly contribute to the crane’s reproduction 10. Therefore, effective and powerful conservation measures are urgently needed to maintain unharmed habitat for the crane. Mineral exploitation and transportation, ongoing wetland degradation, the construction of infrastructure and changes in agricultural practices under the guidance of this policy are severely threatening the crane’s breeding habitats 3, 4, 9, while many consequent threats to the black-necked crane are overlooked. Currently, as one of the least economically developed regions in China, the Tibetan Plateau holds a key position in the ongoing Western Development scheme of China and suffers greatly from aggravating environmental reform activities 12, 13. However, this judgment may be misleading and might lead to some degree of neglect in practical conservation schemes. Perceived as the “Spiritual Bird” in Tibetan Buddhism, the crane has long lived under the conservation and even worship of local Tibetan nomads 10 and has been labeled as “moderately tolerant” to human activities 2.
This situation is especially important as human activities are increasingly affecting the Tibetan alpine wetlands overall, which provide indispensable habitats for the black-necked crane 8.
This discrepancy provides clear evidence that in the geographical continuum of the Tibetan Plateau, many surrounding alpine areas appear to be unstudied with regard to their existing crane population 11. However, the overall population count obtained from wintering grounds greatly outnumbers current estimates from these breeding grounds 10. The black-necked crane shows the most restricted distribution in family Gruidae worldwide 8, breeding exclusively in four separate areas: central and southwest Tibet and Ladakh (TL) parts of Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan Provinces (QGS) northwest Gansu Province (GP) and the southeast corner of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region 9 (XUAR current breeding ranges, for distinction hereafter, CBRs Fig. However, the credibility of the references on which this assessment was based has been recently challenged by new continuous breeding records 4, 5, 6, 7. At present, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies the black-necked crane as “vulnerable” because of its decreasing global population of 10,070–10,970 individuals 3. Owing to the plateau’s environmental inaccessibility to comprehensive and persistent field research, the black-necked crane remains the least studied crane species in the world 2.
#The forest mods crane serial number
The black-necked crane ( Grus nigricollis Taxonomic Serial Number 176187) is endemic to the wider Tibetan Plateau region in the Himalayas and is the only alpine crane species that breeds in the extensive landscape of high central Asia 1. The identified conservation gaps and potential breeding areas can aid in clearly prioritizing future conservation and research, but more attention and study should be directed to the unassessed Western Development of China to secure this endangered crane lineage and other wildlife on the Tibetan Plateau. Additionally, our model suggested that the crane prefers to breed in alpine meadows at an elevation over 2,800 m, a maximum temperature of the warmest month below 20.5 ☌, and a temperature seasonality above 7,800 units. Specifically, the northern parts of the Hengduan Mountains and the southeastern Tibet Valley, the northern side of the middle Kunlun Mountains, parts of the Pamir Plateau, the northern Pakistan Highlands and the western Hindu Kush should be considered as its main potential breeding areas. Our model showed that current conservation gaps account for 26.7% of its predicted breeding habitats. Using machine learning methods and the best-available data from our 7,000-kilometer mega-transect survey and open access data, we built the first species distribution model (SDM) to analyze the black-necked crane’s breeding habitats. The breeding habitats of this species are poorly understood, which greatly hampers practical research and conservation work. The black-necked crane ( Grus nigricollis) is the only alpine crane species and is endemic to the Tibetan Plateau.
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