The Qinling Mountains is considered as a natural boundary separating temperate and subtropical zones. The mountain rises to over 3,000 m, with a more gradual gradient on the south slopes; however, its north slopes are steep. It is typically warmer and moister in the south slopes than in the north, and climatic conditions are largely dependent on elevation. Takins (Budorcas taxicolor) are gregarious bovid herbivores comprised of four subspecies that reside in steep and dense montane regions of central and southeastern China, with two of the four subspecies extending into Bhutan, northeast India and northern Myanmar. All four subspecies are listed as Class I state key protected wild animals in China due to their limited geographic range, over-hunting, deforestation, and habitat loss. An isolated subspecies of takins, golden takins (B. t. bedfordi) reside the Qinling Mountains. The area serves as the northern most range of the species, with approximately 5000 individuals present in total. Over the past few decades, the Chinese government has implemented numerous conservation programs to protect and improve habitats for takins, such as establishment of reserves, the Grain-to-Green program and the Natural Forest Conservation Program. At present, most pre-existing key threats and limiting factors for the species have been mitigated, and populations are now beginning to increase. However, climate change threatens endangered species and challenges current conservation strategies. Effective conservation requires vulnerability assessments for species susceptible to climate change and adaptive strategies to mitigate threats associated with climate. In this paper, we used the maximum entropy algorithm (MaxEnt model) to assess the vulnerability of suitable golden takin habitat in the Qinling Mountains of China, under a mild climate change scenario. Our results showed that:(1) the area of suitable golden takin habitat was 6473 km² under current conditions and 4217 km² under the 2050s climatic scenario, with a mean upward shift in elevation of 210 m; (2) the established nature reserves protect 49.82% of current suitable habitat, and 43.87% of future suitable habitat; (3) 3490 km² of current suitable habitat was predicted to be vulnerable to future climate change; (4) climate refuge areas amounted to 2983 km² and were mainly located in the core area of Qinling Mountains. Given these results, we proposed conservation implications to mitigate the impacts of climate change on golden takin, including intergrating the suitable habitat into the planning of a proposed national park, constructing adaptive habitat corridors, and conducting long-term monitoring.