Abstract:The natural habitat shrinkage and fragmentation is severe due to the combined human activities influence and climate change. Protection of habitat and maintenance of connectivity between habitats play an important role in biodiversity conservation. The ecological status of Inner Mongolia is related to China's ecological security, and Ewenki Autonomous county is located in the northeast of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, with diverse landscapes such as mountains, water, forests, fields, grass, sand, cities, villages, and mines within its territory. In recent years, with the protection of basic grasslands and the construction of various protected areas, the quality of the natural ecology has been greatly improved. However, the contradiction between human and land still exists, and the development of agricultural and animal husbandry activities and the exploitation of mineral resources pose varying degrees of threats to wildlife habitats and migration corridors. Taking Ewenki Autonomous county as study area, this study constructs matrix resistance surface and the identifies habitat patches of each species based on the training results between corresponding species occurrence data and environmental factors simulated by MaxEnt model, which are used to model habitat networks by Least Cost Path Model (LCM), then improves the LCM in terms of effective simulation path effectiveness sifting and corridor with meaningful width generating, and finally delineates the ecological space with the aim of habitat protection and connectivity maintenance by integration of each habitat network, and verifies the protection effectiveness of the integrated network using correlation length index. The results indicate that: (1) the ecological space plays an important role in habitat protection, with the protection rate of 100% for key characteristic species and average protection rate of 88% for other species; (2) The ecological space plays a significant role in maintaining the habitat connectivity of all studied species, and significantly improves the habitat connectivity of species crested grebe (Podiceps cristatus), great tit (Parus major), great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major), swan (Cygnus), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), and Eurasian sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus), with the maximum increase of 626%, according to the assessment of correlation length index; (3) The area of ecological space is only 25.1% of the total area of Evenki Autonomous county, leaving a large space for the development of human activities such as agriculture and animal husbandry; (4) The Yimin River is not only an important ecological axis in Evenki Autonomous county, but also a social and economic development axis, and attention should be paid to coordinate the relationship between ecological protection and social-economic development; (5) The poor connectivity between habitats is found in the southeast of Evenki Autonomous county, and it is necessary to enhance the connectivity of habitats in this area by the ecological protection and recovery of the tributaries of the upper reaches of the Yimin River.