Study area
This study was conducted in Tieqiaoshan Provincial Nature Reserve (TPNR)
in Shanxi Province, China (Figure 1). The TPNR is a federally protected
area established in 2002 by the federal people’s administration,
permitting local population settlement in the TPNR with strict actions
of wildlife protection and the altitude ranges between 1400 m to 1700
m.a.s.l. The total protected area of the reserve is 35,351.7 ha, with a
core zone area of 13,948.6 ha and a buffer area of 7401.7 ha. There are
40 villages located in the two townships of Tie qiao Forest Bureau with
approximately 30,022 inhabitants; the density is 85 inhabitants/km2. The
majority of people practice Buddhism and their livelihood is mainly
based on agricultural crops and livestock (goat Capra hircus ,
sheep Ovis aries and cow Bos indicus ) along with pet or
stray dogs which are found in each village. The climate is warming
temperate in summer and continental in winter. The annual rainfall is
about 600 mm and the annual temperature is about 6 °C. Major threats for
this reserve are tree logging at the forest edge, overgrazing, forest
fire and human-carnivore conflicts (Tieliang, 1985). The area also has a
high wildlife diversity containing 24 species of mammals, 6 species of
reptiles, 3 species of amphibians, and 116 species of birds and sixteen
wild animal species are protected there and the flora is plenty by
deciduous broadleaf, coniferous, and mixed deciduous forests. The common
tree species are Chinese red pine (Pinus tabuliformis ), Liaotung
oak (Quercus liaotungensis ), white birch (Betula
platyphylla ), and larch (Larix principis ) , and rare tree ,
willow (Salix spp ), apricots (Prunus spp ) etc and
dominated shrubs such as sea buck thorn, hippophe spp,Berberis spp and Artemisia spp and overall the TPNR has
78 genera of wild seed plants (Hua et al., 2020).