Assesment of Habitat Suitability Wildgoat (Capra aegagrus aegagrus) in the Lashgardar Protected Area, Hamedan Province

The effective management and protection of wildlife populations depends on human understanding and prediction of wildlife habitat communications. Determining species distribution is essential for the conservation and management of populations, especially for endangered species. One of the methods of determining species distribution is habitat evaluation which can be used to predict species distribution range which is a suitable tool for conservation and management purposes. Wild goat are species of orderly-dispersed cement species in mountainous regions of Europe, Asia Minor, Central Asia and the Middle East, which is one of the vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List. In the present study, habitat suitability of this species was investigated in Lashgardar Protected Area, Malayer. Ecological Niche Factor Analysis (ENFA) was used to model the habitat of this species in the fourth version of Biomapper software.In this study, species presence points as dependent variables were used and information layers including altitude, slope, direction, distance to road and rural areas maps, and diversity of lowlands and elevations (geomorphology) were used as independent variables. Habitat suitability results indicated that the selective habitat of goats and paws at altitudes above 2400 m and in rocky areas with a long distance from the road and village and mainly on steep rock mass slopes (slopes 30 to 60 and more than 60 Percent) with severe mechanical degradation and degraded areas. The analysis results showed that wild goat in this area, marginal habitat selection and have Ecological Niche Factor Analysis.