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."

Read More: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-016-0040

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."

Read More: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-016-0023

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."

Read More: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01323-7

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."

Read More: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-37447-0

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."

Read More: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-022-01737-8