Study area
This study was conducted in Tieqiaoshan Provincial Nature Reserve (TPNR) in Shanxi Province, China (Figure 1). The TPNR is a federally protected area established in 2002 by the federal people’s administration, permitting local population settlement in the TPNR with strict actions of wildlife protection and the altitude ranges between 1400 m to 1700 m.a.s.l. The total protected area of the reserve is 35,351.7 ha, with a core zone area of 13,948.6 ha and a buffer area of 7401.7 ha. There are 40 villages located in the two townships of Tie qiao Forest Bureau with approximately 30,022 inhabitants; the density is 85 inhabitants/km2. The majority of people practice Buddhism and their livelihood is mainly based on agricultural crops and livestock (goat Capra hircus , sheep Ovis aries and cow Bos indicus ) along with pet or stray dogs which are found in each village. The climate is warming temperate in summer and continental in winter. The annual rainfall is about 600 mm and the annual temperature is about 6 °C. Major threats for this reserve are tree logging at the forest edge, overgrazing, forest fire and human-carnivore conflicts (Tieliang, 1985). The area also has a high wildlife diversity containing 24 species of mammals, 6 species of reptiles, 3 species of amphibians, and 116 species of birds and sixteen wild animal species are protected there and the flora is plenty by deciduous broadleaf, coniferous, and mixed deciduous forests. The common tree species are Chinese red pine (Pinus tabuliformis ), Liaotung oak (Quercus liaotungensis ), white birch (Betula platyphylla ), and larch (Larix principis ) , and rare tree , willow (Salix spp ), apricots (Prunus spp ) etc and dominated shrubs such as sea buck thorn, hippophe spp,Berberis spp and Artemisia spp and overall the TPNR has 78 genera of wild seed plants (Hua et al., 2020).