%0 Journal Article
%T Threats to Mammals on Fragmented Habitats around Asella Town, Central Ethiopia
%A Mohammed Kasso
%A Afework Bekele
%J International Journal of Biodiversity
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/903898
%X Assessment of the current information on the major threat to mammals in fragmented remnant montane forest of Child Care Center and School of Agriculture was conducted from March to July 2013. The prevailing threatening factors were collected by questionnaires, checklists, interview, observation, and document analysis. A total of 22 species of mammals were recorded of which six (27%) were endemic to the country and vulnerable. Mammals and their habitats were threatened by land fragmentation, hunting, habitat modification, land degradation and deforestation, lack of awareness, and finance. Although all mammals were susceptible to hunting, high rate of occurrence was recorded for Olive baboon (Papio anubis). The different infrastructure construction in both compounds is causing different impacts. As the area is rich in mammals and other species and threatened by different factors to reverse the situation, urgent conservation action is highly recommended. 1. Introduction Habitat fragmentation is splitting of natural habitats and ecosystems into smaller, more isolated patches driven by many different factors like disturbance, pollution, settlement, infrastructure, and deforestation [1]. It is the main process responsible for biodiversity loss and threat in tropical forests leading to isolation [2]. Conversion to agricultural land use results in a loss of habitat, reduction in patch size, and an increase in distance between patches and new habitat formation [3]. Habitat loss has pervasive and disruptive impacts on the biodiversity and its magnitude of the ecological impacts can be exacerbated by habitat fragmentation [4]. Anthropogenic activities were frequently related in many ways to forest fragmentation and alteration of natural communities [2]. Land transformation severely affects the integrity of ecological systems through loss of native species, invasion of exotic species, pronounced soil erosion, and decreased water quality [5]. Human activities like tourism practices, hunting, agriculture, and cattle rearing are also known to affect the demography, population structure, spatial range of individuals and species, and change in the community structure [2]. Although the mechanism of impact on populations is poorly known, habitat fragmentation is often considered as a major threat and endangerment to biodiversity [6]. As the proportion of suitable habitat decreases, small and isolated habitat patches appear whose patch size and degree of isolation influence the population size of individual species [3]. This leads species to depend on increasingly smaller
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2014/903898/