Forecasting impacts of climate change on barking deer distribution in Pakistan

Climate change is a significant driver of biodiversity loss impacting an estimated 15-30% of known species by the end of the 21st century. We assessed current suitable habitat and projected future distribution of barking deer (Muntiacus vaginalis) across three climate change scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5) in northern Pakistan using 99 occurrence records from remote camera during 2021-2023. We obtained bioclimatic data for current (1970-2000) and future (2041-2060, 2061-2080, 2081-2100) periods from the WorldClim database using the Hadley Global Environment Model (HadGEM3-GC31-LL). We used MaxEnt software to predict current and future distributions of barking deer habitat, and changes in suitable habitat across these periods. The model had excellent performance (AUC = 0.936, TSS = 0.823) and jackknife tests showed that precipitation seasonality (Bio15) contributed 32.2% to model predictions, temperature seasonality (Bio4) 28.5%, and annual mean temperature (Bio1) 27.0%. In the current period, highly suitable habitat for barking deer represented 3.7%, moderately suitable habitat 4.4%, less suitable habitat 6.8%, and unsuitable habitat 85.1% of the study area. The gain in suitable habitat was greatest (30.2%) under SSP2-4.5 during 2061-2080. The predicted loss in the suitable habitat of barking deer across all periods was (19.7-23.3%) while the greatest loss (23.3%) was under SSP1-2.6 during 2061-2080. Overall, climate change is projected to result in an overall net gain in suitable habitat for barking deer. Future conservation efforts for barking deer should target currently suitable habitat forecasted to remain suitable.