Conserving large mammals on small islands: A case study on one of the world’s most understudied pigs, the Togean islands babirusa

Conserving large mammals on small islands poses a great challenge, given their high resource demand within the limited space available. The endangered Togean Islands babirusa (Babyrousa togeanensis) is one of these species, with a distribution range limited to four small islands in the Togean Archipelago, Indonesia. Despite being listed as endangered, very little information is available on the distribution and ecology of this species. To address this critical knowledge gap, we here report the first field-based ecological study of the Togean Islands babirusa across its entire distribution range. Following a stratified random sampling procedure, we distributed camera traps at 103 stations across four islands to collect data on the species distribution from July-October 2022. We performed an occupancy modeling analysis to assess the species’ habitat use, with various habitat features estimated through remote sensing and field measurements as covariates. We found that forest and mangrove availability over a large area positively influenced babirusa habitat selection. Babirusas only made use of agricultural areas when large forest areas were available nearby. Our results highlight the benefits of redesigning the national park area to accommodate babirusa habitat requirements, specifically by reassigning the non-forested park areas (about 30% of the park area) to non-protected forests currently outside the park boundary (about 50% of total forested area). Our case study exemplifies key challenges associated with conserving large mammals on small islands and highlights the importance of following an adaptive management approach, which in this case implies shifting 30% of the current protected area

Spatial Habitat Suitability Modeling of the Roti Snake-Necked Turtle (Chelodina Mccordi) Based on Landsat-8 Imagery and GIS

Landsat imagery can be used to establish spatial habitat suitability modeling for prediction habitat quality and evaluation potential habitat. However, the imagery has to limit information for specific habitat characteristics such as turtles' habitat. Chelodina mccordi is an endemic turtle from Roti Island but many previous studies have been done either biological or non-spatial studies. This study uses Landsat-8 OLI and TIRS as actual data and support with Landsat-5 TM as historical data, through a Geographic Information System (GIS). This study aims to create a spatial habitat suitability map model of C. mccordi and its mapping accuracy. The method that is used for modeling is overlaying indicative parameter maps use of logistic regression to presents the habitat suitability index (HSI). There are nine parameters used for modeling in this study, i.e. normalized difference water index (NDWI), land surface temperature (LST), slope, the topographic wetness index (TWI), distance from high canopy density, distance from settlement and agriculture, distance from freshwater, distance from the sea or salty, and distance from the street. We found three parameters that have strong contribution i.e. the NDWI, the LST, and the TWI. The result of spatial habitat suitability model of C. mccordi based on Landsat-8 OLI/TIRS and GIS analysis presents the value of mapping accuracy is about 75%