Habitat protection is a basic way to maintain biodiversity. The mountain broad-leaved forest in southern China is the hotspot of biodiversity. However, due to the lack of protection coverage, the conservation level needs to be improved. In this study, Manglietia fordiana, a typical mountain broad-leaved forest species, was taken as an example. Through large-scale collection of occurrence, the suitable distribution was predicted, and the key factors with high contribution to the distribution were discovered. At the same time, a case study of Jiulian Mountain was carried out to investigate the occurrence of M. fordiana at local scale, aiming to understand the preference characteristics among elevation gradients and vegetation types. MaxEnt was used to establish the best model to predict the suitable distribution. The results showed that M. fordiana mainly distributed in the southern and southwestern mountains of China (such as Daiyun Mountain, Nanling Mountain, Luoxiao Mountain, Wuyi Mountain, etc.), extending northward to the southern slope of Dabie Mountain and westward to Hengduan Mountain. This potential distribution was mainly contributed by these variables:precipitation of driest month (bio14, contribution rate 34.6%), altitude (19.2%), and temperature seasonality (bio4, 15.6%), precipitation of warmest quarter (bio18, 12.0%), as well as min-temperature of the coldest month (bio6, 7.0%). The niche, indicated by 60% suitable probability, was 30-55 mm in bio14400-1500 m in altitude, 500-800 mm in bio18 etc.. With the suitable distribution, the priority area of M. fordiana was determined associating the distribution of broad-leaved forests and the preferred altitude (> 700m). Using superposition analysis and existing nature reserves, the gaps were identified. Results showed that the protection coverage of priority area was 4.1%-6.0%, and it was also less than 10% (8.03%) in high-suitable areas. Along the altitude gradients of<400m, 400-700 m and > 700 m, the proportion of protection was significantly higher in > 700 m area (8.7%) than that in 400-700m (4.4%) and < 400 (2.3%) groups, which indicated that the early reserve design basically followed the principle of priority area protection and could effectively protect the high priority area of M. fordiana. Similarly, the case of Jiulian Mountain Nature Reserve showed that 51.4% of the high suitable habitats were strictly protected by the core area. Our results suggested that it was still necessary to improve the protection coverage in Huangshan-Tianmu Mountains, Eastern Miaoling Mountains, northern and southern Gaoligong Mountains, border mountain area between China and Vietnam and southwest mountain area of Guangdong Province. Through the establishment of new nature reserves and optimization of current protection network, the overall protection level of broad-leaved forest in mountainous area can be improved.