Winter and summer distribution of wild goat in Kolah-Qazi National Park

Understanding where threatened species prefer to live and distinguishing their basic habitat requirements are the first priority for any decision making and action plans. Habitat suitability models is one of the available tools for improving this knowledge. Wild goat (Capra aegagrus) is a vulnerable species which is widely distributed in Iran, but the ecology of this species is not sufficiently studied. The purpose of this study was modelling seasonal habitat suitability and habitat associations of wild goat in Kolah-Qazi National Park, one of its typic habitats in cental Asia .Logistic Regression approach was used to model wild goat habitat suitability using both the presence and absence points. Elevation, distance to water trough, distance to settlement, distance to public road, and distance to guard patrol road were recognised as the most important variables determining habitat suitability of wild goat. According to the produced habitat suitability maps, in winter wild goat herds aggregated in mountain borders but in autumn their distribution is more evenness and the extent of suitable habitats in winter was more than the summer. The accuracy of both winter and revealed good efficiency The obtained results have implications for conservation of wild goat across its distribution range.