BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH Potential impacts of oil and gas development and climate change on migratory reindeer calving grounds across the Russian Arctic Tobias Kuemmerle 1,2 *, Leonid Baskin 3 , Pedro J. Leit~ ao 1 , Alexander V. Prishchepov 4 , Kirsten Thonicke 2 and Volker C. Radeloff 5 1 Geography Department, Humboldt- University Berlin, Berlin, Germany, 2 Earth System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, Germany, 3 A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, 4 Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe (IAMO), Halle (Saale), Germany, 5 Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin- Madison, Madison, WI, USA *Correspondence: Tobias Kuemmerle, Geography Department, Humboldt-University Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany. E-mail: tobias.kuemmerle @geo.hu-berlin.de ABSTRACT Aim Drivers of biodiversity loss are increasingly broad in scale, requiring conser- vation planning to move towards range-wide assessments. This is especially chal- lenging for migratory species, such as reindeer or caribou (Rangifer tarandus), which use only a small portion of their range at a given point in time, and for which some parts of their range, such as calving grounds, may be much more important than others. Our aim was to identify potential calving ground habitat of wild tundra reindeer populations throughout Russia, where scarce knowledge about seasonal reindeer habitat is an obstacle for conservation planning, and to assess possible impacts from oil and gas development and climate change. Location Northern Eurasia. Method We used occurrence data from known reindeer calving grounds using species distribution models to first assess calving grounds characteristics and second predict their distribution across the Russian Arctic. We then compared our calving ground map with maps of oil and gas development, and a range of climate change indicators. Results We found areas throughout the Russian Arctic that are suitable for calving, including for some wild reindeer populations where calving ground locations are unknown. Variables relating to resource availability in spring and predator avoidance were the strongest predictors in our model. Oil and gas development affects calving grounds especially in the Barents Sea region and in south-western Siberia, whereas climate change affects calving grounds on Taymyr, Chukotka, and Kamchatka. Main conclusions We conducted the first assessment of calving grounds of Russia’s wild reindeer populations, highlighting the spatial heterogeneity of the threats that they may face. Given the potentially strong impact of oil and gas development and climate change, conservation planning should aim for design- ing resilient conservation networks that would allow Arctic biodiversity to freely move in time and space and thus to adapt to changing environments. Keywords Arctic, calving grounds, climate change, land use change, oil and gas exploita- tion, parturition, Russia, seasonal habitat, species distribution modelling. INTRODUCTION As global environmental change accelerates, conservation planning faces the challenge to move beyond protecting indi- vidual sites towards range-wide assessments (Sanderson et al., 2002; Kuemmerle et al., 2011; Redford et al., 2011). This is particularly challenging for migratory species, which at any given point in time use only a fraction of their total range (Berger, 2004; Mueller et al., 2011; Singh & Milner- Gulland, 2011). However, not all parts of their ranges are DOI: 10.1111/ddi.12167 ª 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ddi 1 Diversity and Distributions, (Diversity Distrib.) (2014) 1–14 A Journal of Conservation Biogeography Diversity and Distributions