Prioritization of Potential Linkages among Protected Areas in East Azerbaijan

As a major threat to biodiversity, habitat fragmentation has increased the local extinction of species due to a function of inbreeding and demographic stochastic factors. Creating or maintaining of corridors among core areas of protected areas decreases the negative impacts of fragmented habitat. This study attempts to prioritize wildlife linkage areas among current protected areas of East Azerbaijan based on the biological importance and threat-opportunity. The prioritization process was done through assembling stakeholders’ opinions. Then, for the highest priority linkage, the focal species that are sensitive to habitat loss and fragmentation were determined based on the ideas of environmental officials. The distribution maps of focal species (Persian leopard, lynx, ibex, wild sheep, and two reptile species) were modeled based on four different modelling techniques: GLM, MARS, MaxEnt, and RF using species presences. Although all of the individual models showed good overall prediction accuracy for Persian leopard and ibex; MaxEnt and RF models indicated a good discrimination ability for wild sheep and only RF for lynx. However, no models had good prediction accuracy for reptiles (Coluber and Vipera; AUC