Leopard Cat Habitat Conservation Plan of the Gangseo Wetland Ecology Park

摘要

The quality of most urban wildlife habitats has been deteriorated due to habitat destruction or fragmentation during our fast urbanization process in Korea.But our environmental impact mitigation plan to conserve core habitats and wildlife passages of the Gangseo Wetland Ecology Park of Seoul during a highway expansion project is a rare exception.The objectives of this paper were to survey the activity patterns and home ranges of mammalian species in the fragmented urban riparian habitats, and to propose a wildlife habitat conservation plan that can be incorporated to the highway expansion project.Leopard cats and raccoon dogs were selected as the target species for the wildlife habitat conservation plan, and it was based on the home-range size and movement pattern obtained through an extensive radio-tracking between 2008 and 2011.The outcomes can be summarized as follows.First, the mean home-range size and core habitat size of leopard cats were 1.45km2 and 0.28km2, respectively, and traffic islands surrounded by expressway and merging lanes were identified as core habitats for daytime refuges for the leopard cats.Second, target species frequently crossed over the urban highways between the daytime refuges and the park, and non-wildlife passages such as drainage pipes and a pedestrian path were also used for supplementary passages.Third, impact mitigation measures of the highway expansion project were proposed.They include a landscape ecological conservation plan that incorporates the park and surrounding areas, the locations and sizes of three proposed wildlife passages, and guidelines for the management of the wildlife habitats and passages of the site.