Mountain Nyala Species Habitat Suitability Modelling in response to Species Sustainability and Ecotourism Development Using Geospatial Technologies: The Case of Bale Mountain National Park, Ethiopia

Abstract

The Mountain Nyala (Tragelaphus buxtoni) is an endangered and endemic flagship species to Ethiopian highlands. This study aims to identify and map the distribution of suitable habitats for the Mountain Nyala in response to species sustainability and ecotourism development in the Bale Mountain national park. Environmental and anthropogenic factors, such as vegetation cover, topography (i.e., slope, elevation), soil type, precipitation, temperature, settlement, river, and road buffer zones were included to develop a Geographic Information System (GIS) based habitat suitability model for the Mountain Nyala. The statistical method such as pairwise comparison was applied to rate the individual classes of each factor and weight the impact of one factor against the other which helped to determine the suitability model. Basically, all factors were converted into raster and combine by using weight overlays in ArcMap with weights from the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) which based on the distribution of each class of habitat factors to generate the final thematic map. The map shows that within all park zones, 4% or ~ 80 ha, 27% or ~ 58767 ha, 51% ~ 109143 ha, 21% ~ 45289 ha, and 6% or ~ 131 ha lie in suitability zone ‘unsuitable’, ‘less suitable’, ‘marginal suitable’, ‘moderately suitable’, and ‘high suitable’, respectively. Three environmental variables, vegetation cover, slope, and elevation, were the most important predictors having the greatest contribution to the habitat suitability model. The result revealed that habitat fragmentation is a common problem for the survival of the Mountain Nyala species throughout its ranges of distribution. Thus, future conservation and management action should address toward solving this problem through designing appropriate corridors that help connect the fragmented suitable habitat patches for this endangered flagship species in the park.