Biodiversity and Conservation Science News: 2022

26 October 2022

Latest ‘plan for the planet’ calls for protecting 44% of land, home to 1.8b humans

Minimum land area for conserving terrestrial biodiversity. Components include PAs (light blue), KBAs (purple), and ecologically intact areas (dark blue). Where they overlap, PAs are shown above KBAs, which are shown above ecologically intact areas. New conservation priorities are in green. The Venn diagram shows the proportional overlap between features. Map courtesy of Allan et al.

Abstract: "A new study says 44% of Earth’s terrestrial area needs conservation attention to halt the runaway destruction of the natural world. The figure is significantly higher than the goal currently under discussion as part of the global post-2020 agenda, which is to protect 30% of land and ocean by 2030. The area identified for protection by the new study is home to 1.8 billion people, almost a quarter of the human population. The study authors suggest prioritizing biologically rich regions at the highest risk of being converted for human use by 2030, most notably in Africa."

17 September 2022

Zero-deforestation commitments ‘fundamentally limited’ in tackling deforestation, study argues

Abstract: "Researchers found that while 90-99% of tropical deforestation in 2011-2015 was driven by agricultural industries, only 45-65% of the cleared land was actually used to grow crops or raise cattle. The rest of the cleared land was the result of activities such as speculative clearing and out-of-control agricultural fires, the study says. The researchers also concluded that because three-quarters of tropical deforestation is driven by domestic demand, corporate zero-deforestation pledges geared toward expert markets are limited in their ability to reduce this forest loss."

‘Mind-blowing’ marine heat waves put Mediterranean ecosystems at grave risk

Abstract: "A recent study reveals the widespread effects of climate change-driven marine heat waves on the ecological communities of the Mediterranean Sea. Rises in sea surface temperatures as high as 5° Celsius (9° Fahrenheit) above normal have caused die-offs in 50 different taxonomic groups of animals from around the Mediterranean Basin. These far-reaching impacts of the warming sea could devastate the fisheries on which many of the Mediterranean region’s 400 million people rely. Researchers advocate bolstering and expanding marine protected areas. Although they can’t hold back the warmer waters that have proven deadly to the sea’s rich biodiversity, these sanctuaries can help ensure that these species don’t have to cope simultaneously with other pressures, such as overfishing or pollution."

Future reefs: A manifesto to save the world’s coral gardens

Abstract: "Coral reefs cover less than 3% of the ocean but contain a quarter of all marine life. Next to tropical rainforests, they are the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth. Fifty of the world’s leading scientists recently laid out a roadmap to save the world’s coral reefs. With urgent climate action and by following this roadmap, these oases of beauty may retain critical marine biodiversity and provide a lifeline for coastal communities into the next century and beyond, a new op-ed argues."

A Climate Risk Index for Marine Life

Abstract: "Climate change is impacting virtually all marine life. Adaptation strategies will require a robust understanding of the risks to species and ecosystems and how those propagate to human societies. We develop a unified and spatially explicit index to comprehensively evaluate the climate risks to marine life. Under high emissions (SSP5-8.5), almost 90% of ~25,000 species are at high or critical risk, with species at risk across 85% of their native distributions. One tenth of the ocean contains ecosystems where the aggregated climate risk, endemism and extinction threat of their constituent species are high. Climate change poses the greatest risk for exploited species in low-income countries with a high dependence on fisheries. Mitigating emissions (SSP1-2.6) reduces the risk for virtually all species (98.2%), enhances ecosystem stability and disproportionately benefits food-insecure populations in low-income countries. Our climate risk assessment can help prioritize vulnerable species and ecosystems for climate-adapted marine conservation and fisheries management efforts."

07 July 2022

Global marine protected areas to prevent extinctions

Abstract: "One goal of global marine protected areas (MPAs) is to ensure they represent a breadth of taxonomic biodiversity. Ensuring representation of species in MPAs, however, would require protecting vast areas of the global oceans and does not explicitly prioritize species of conservation concern. When threatened species are considered, a recent study found that only a small fraction of their geographic ranges are within the global MPA network. Which global marine areas, and what conservation actions beyond MPAs could be prioritized to prevent marine extinctions (Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi Target 12), remains unknown. Here, we use systematic conservation planning approaches to prioritize conservation actions for sharks, rays and chimaeras (class Chondrichthyes). We use chondrichthyans as they have the highest proportion of threatened species of any marine class. We find that expanding the MPA network by 3% in 70 nations would cover half of the geographic range of 99 imperilled endemic chondrichthyans. Our hotspot analysis reveals that just 12 nations harbour more than half (53) of the imperilled endemics. Four of these hotspot nations are within the top ten chondrichthyan fishing nations in the world, but are yet to implement basic chondrichthyan fisheries management. Given their geopolitical realities, conservation action for some countries will require relief and reorganization to enable sustainable fisheries and species protection."

Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains

Abstract: "Identifying hotspots of species threat has been a successful approach for setting conservation priorities. One important challenge in conservation is that, in many hotspots, export industries continue to drive overexploitation. Conservation measures must consider not just the point of impact, but also the consumer demand that ultimately drives resource use. To understand which species threat hotspots are driven by which consumers, we have developed a new approach to link a set of biodiversity footprint accounts to the hotspots of threatened species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The result is a map connecting consumption to spatially explicit hotspots driven by production on a global scale. Locating biodiversity threat hotspots driven by consumption of goods and services can help to connect conservationists, consumers, companies and governments in order to better target conservation actions."

Towards climate-smart, three-dimensional protected areas for biodiversity conservation in the high seas

Abstract: "Marine species are moving rapidly in response to warming, often in different directions and with variations dependent on location and depth. Given the current impetus to increase the area of protected ocean to 30%, conservation planning must include the 64% of the ocean beyond national jurisdictions, which in turn requires associated design challenges for conventional conservation to be addressed. Here we present a planning approach for the high seas that conserves biodiversity, minimizes exposure to climate change, retains species within reserve boundaries and reduces conflict with fishing. This is developed using data from across four depth domains, considering 12,932 vertebrate, invertebrate and algal species and three climate scenarios. The resultant climate-smart conservation areas cover 6% of the high seas and represent a low-regret option that provides a nucleus for developing a full network of high-seas marine reserves."

Effects of roads on giant panda distribution: a mountain range scale evaluation

Abstract: "Few studies have focused on the mountain ranges scale effects of roads on wildlife. This lack of data could lead to an underestimation of the negative impact of roads on animal populations. We analyzed a dataset that included 74.4% of the giant panda population and covered 78.7% of the global giant panda habitat to estimate road-effect zones for major roads, and to investigate how these major roads influenced the distribution of giant pandas on a mountain range spatial scale. We found that the density of giant panda signs was significantly decreased by proximity to major roads. The effect zone reached 5,000 m from national roads and 1,500 m from provincial roads. Structural equation model analysis revealed that the strongest negative impact of major roads on giant pandas was via the reduction of nearby forest cover. The results should provide a better understanding of the impact of anthropogenic infrastructure and regional economic development on wildlife, thus providing a basis for conservation policy decisions. We suggest that the environmental impact assessment of proposed roadways or further researches on road ecological effects should expand to a larger scale and consider the possible habitat degradation caused by road access."

Forest degradation drives widespread avian habitat and population declines

Abstract: "In many regions of the world, forest management has reduced old forest and simplified forest structure and composition. We hypothesized that such forest degradation has resulted in long-term habitat loss for forest-associated bird species of eastern Canada (130,017 km²) which, in turn, has caused bird-population declines. Despite little change in overall forest cover, we found substantial reductions in old forest as a result of frequent clear-cutting and a broad-scale transformation to intensified forestry. Back-cast species distribution models revealed that breeding habitat loss occurred for 66% of the 54 most common species from 1985 to 2020 and was strongly associated with reduction in old age classes. Using a long-term, independent dataset, we found that habitat amount predicted population size for 94% of species, and habitat loss was associated with population declines for old-forest species. Forest degradation may therefore be a primary cause of biodiversity decline in managed forest landscapes."

02 February 2022

For the Year of the Tiger, a shared vision for the future of the iconic cat (commentary)

Abstract: "As the Year of the Tiger begins on February 1, a coalition of six top NGOs is committing to a cooperative approach to save the iconic big cat. In the past 12 years, tigers increased significantly in some areas but disappeared from others: a close assessment of these trends is key in advance of the next Global Tiger summit in September 2022. The authors from IUCN, FFI, WCS, WWF, Traffic and Panthera argue that ambition must increase but also that funders must support collaborative efforts instead of the status quo/competitive model of funding conservation."

Emphasizing declining populations in the Living Planet Report

Summary: "The Living Planet Report, which has been published biannually since 1998, is key for understanding trends in wildlife populations and promoting sound conservation. Leung et al. recently disagreed with the conclusions of the Living Planet Report and found that the overall pattern of population declines stems from very few populations (extreme clusters), beyond which global vertebrate populations are not declining. However, when properly accounting also for the influence of the fastest-increasing populations, we find that the overall declines in the Living Planet Report are practically unchanged. Moreover, the Living Planet Database is heavily biased towards populations that receive more conservation attention, indicating that the true population trends are indeed dire and may actually be worse than depicted in the Living Planet Report.