The Western Tragopan Tragopan melanocephalus is endemic to the Western Himalayas and currently listed as ‘Vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List which also emphasizes a data deficiency regarding its distribution and population size. With this study we provide new data from the Palas Valley, northern Pakistan and deliver a range wide estimate of the species current, past, and future potential distribution as derived from environmental niche models. In the Palas Valley, Western Tragopans occupied different summer habitats on north-facing slopes and winter habitats on south-facing slopes. A quantitative estimate of local populations in six side valleys was inferred from individual call-count surveys during two breeding seasons (April and May 2017, 2018) and disturbance factors were evaluated from information of local people provided in questionnaires. Generalized-linear models (GLMs) showed a significant effect of disturbance factors on Western Tragopans, i.e. local abundances decreased with increasing disturbance from livestock, collectors and hunters visiting the area. This effect was visible across survey years and at both, south- as well as north-facing slopes. While the known distributional range of the Western Tragopan is small and fragmented, our niche models inferred climatically suitable space between Himachal Pradesh and northwestern Pakistan to be more continuous. Given the species sensitivity to disturbance, these findings indicate that the observed fragmentation of the current range might also be attributed to habitat transformation or anthropogenic disturbance rather than climatic suitability. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) T. melanocephalus was probably restricted to small forest refugia, whereas projections onto eleven future climate simulations were inconclusive with the majority suggesting that climatically suitable space for T. melanocephalus will likely expand in response to anthropogenic climate change. In conclusion, we recommend that future conservation measures should be planned with regard to the species’ sensitivity to anthropogenic disturbances.

Species distribution modeling is a tool that is gaining widespread use in the projection of future distributions of invasive species and has important potential as a tool for monitoring invasive species spread. However, the transferability of models from one area to another has been inadequately investigated. This study aimed to determine the degree to which species distribution models (SDMs) for cogongrass, developed with distribution data from Mississippi (USA), could be applied to a similar area in neighboring Alabama. Cogongrass distribution data collected in Mississippi were used to train an SDM that was then tested for accuracy and transferability with cogongrass distribution data collected by a forest management company in Alabama. Analyses indicated the SDM had a relatively high predictive ability within the region of the training data but had poor transferability to the Alabama data. Analysis of the Alabama data, via independent SDM development, indicated that predicted cogongrass distribution in Alabama was more strongly correlated with soil variables than was the case in Mississippi, where the SDM was most strongly correlated with tree canopy cover. Results suggest that model transferability is influenced strongly by (1) data collection methods, (2) landscape context of the survey data, and (3) variations in qualitative aspects of environmental data used in model development.