Abstract:Population dynamics of the main prey of the Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) were simulated by the “Virtual Experiment” approach from 1992 to 2011 under 10 landscape scenarios with different fragmentation degrees in the Eastern Wanda Mountains (EWM). This approach used LAPS (Landscape-level Animal Population Simulator) to simulate scenarios and thus to study the effect of the present landscape fragmentation in EWM on prey population dynamics. The results showed that LAPS could satisfactorily depict the sharp decline of the prey populations in EWM. The simulated population sizes and densities in each habitat agreed well with observations in 2002. The changes of habitat in class-level (e.g., farmland or forest) and landscape-level metrics revealed that the fragmentation degrees of all 10 simulated landscape scenarios increased gradually because of the expansion of farmland in EWM, but the landscape-level fragmentation was slightly less than the class-level. The population sizes in each scenario were not significantly different from each other, indicating that the impact of the present landscape fragmentation in EWM on prey populations is not great. Anthropogenic activities such as hunting and poaching probably kept the prey populations much less than their environmental capacity; consequently the effect of landscape fragmentation was not significant. Therefore, the effective control of anthropogenic activities is probably currently more important than avoiding habitat fragmentation in order to enlarge the prey populations and restore the Amur tiger population in EWM.