Abstract: Pére David’s deer (Elaphurus davidianus), an endemic rare species in China, is a successful case of the reintroduction of wild extinct species, which gave a mode of reintroduction of wildlife in biodiversity conservation. Understanding the potential habitat suitability of Pére David’s deer can provide ecological information and a scientific basis for its conservation and population propagation. In this study, 15 distribution sites of free/semi-free populations and 11 environmental variables that may affect the distribution of Pére David’s deer were used to predict the most likely potential habitat and analyze its limiting factors by contrasting two conditions: natural conditions and human disturbance conditions, based on the MaxEnt model. The results showed that the total potential habitat for Pére David’s deer under natural conditions reached 4791795.3 km², accounting for 49.8% of China’s total land area. The area of highly suitable habitat was 526056.3 km², accounting for 5.5% of the total land area of China and mainly distributed in the humid plains in the east-central region. Altitude, slope aspect, and vegetation type were the environmental factors with higher contribution. When considering human activity factors, the potential habitat of Pére David’s deer reduced by 13.5% of the total land area. The area of highly suitable habitat was reduced to 317808.3 km², accounting for only 3.3% of the total land area in China. The habitat showed an obvious trend of fragmentation. The range of suitable altitude values is decreased and moved to lower altitudes, and the optimal altitude threshold decreases from 647 m for natural conditions to 635 m for human-influenced conditions. There was no obvious negative correlation between the presence probability of Pére David’s deer and human disturbance variables, which may be related to the fact that the location of the protected area was artificially set and the reintroduced provenance spread sites were close to anthropic activity zone. Some suggestions were put forward, such as settingup protected areas, establishing a perfect circuit monitoring system of protected areas, developing ecological corridors, artificially intervening interspecies communication, strengthening resource allocation, and improving ecological compensation mechanism.

Key words: Pére David’s deer (Elaphurus davidianus), MaxEnt model, habitat suitability, potential habitat, protection countermeasure