Area-based conservation in the twenty-first century.

Humanity will soon define a new era for nature-one that seeks to transform decades of underwhelming responses to the global biodiversity crisis. Area-based conservation efforts, which include both protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, are likely to extend and diversify. However, persistent shortfalls in ecological representation and management effectiveness diminish the potential role of area-based conservation in stemming biodiversity loss. Here we show how the expansion of protected areas by national governments since 2010 has had limited success in increasing the coverage across different elements of biodiversity (ecoregions, 12,056 threatened species, 'Key Biodiversity Areas' and wilderness areas) and ecosystem services (productive fisheries, and carbon services on land and sea). To be more successful after 2020, area-based conservation must contribute more effectively to meeting global biodiversity goals-ranging from preventing extinctions to retaining the most-intact ecosystems-and must better collaborate with the many Indigenous peoples, community groups and private initiatives that are central to the successful conservation of biodiversity. The long-term success of area-based conservation requires parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to secure adequate financing, plan for climate change and make biodiversity conservation a far stronger part of land, water and sea management policies.

Author Correction: Area-based conservation in the twenty-first century.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Reconciling global priorities for conserving biodiversity habitat.

Degradation and loss of natural habitat is the major driver of the current global biodiversity crisis. Most habitat conservation efforts to date have targeted small areas of highly threatened habitat, but emerging debate suggests that retaining large intact natural systems may be just as important. We reconcile these perspectives by integrating fine-resolution global data on habitat condition and species assemblage turnover to identify Earth's high-value biodiversity habitat. These are areas in better condition than most other locations predicted to have once supported a similar assemblage of species and are found within both intact regions and human-dominated landscapes. However, only 18.6% of this high-value habitat is currently protected globally. Averting permanent biodiversity loss requires clear, spatially explicit targets for retaining these unprotected high-value habitats.

Correction: Hotspots of human impact on threatened terrestrial vertebrates.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000158.].

Hotspots of human impact on threatened terrestrial vertebrates.

Conserving threatened species requires identifying where across their range they are being impacted by threats, yet this remains unresolved across most of Earth. Here, we present a global analysis of cumulative human impacts on threatened species by using a spatial framework that jointly considers the co-occurrence of eight threatening processes and the distribution of 5,457 terrestrial vertebrates. We show that impacts to species are widespread, occurring across 84% of Earth's surface, and identify hotspots of impacted species richness and coolspots of unimpacted species richness. Almost one-quarter of assessed species are impacted across >90% of their distribution, and approximately 7% are impacted across their entire range. These results foreshadow localised extirpations and potential extinctions without conservation action. The spatial framework developed here offers a tool for defining strategies to directly mitigate the threats driving species' declines, providing essential information for future national and global conservation agendas.

Wilderness forms and their implications for global environmental policy and conservation.

With the intention of securing industry-free land and seascapes, protecting wilderness entered international policy as a formal target for the first time in the zero draft of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Given this increased prominence in international policy, it is timely to consider the extent to which the construct of wilderness supports global conservation objectives. We evaluated the construct by overlaying recently updated cumulative human pressure maps that offer a global-scale delineation of industry-free land as wilderness with maps of carbon stock, species richness, and ground travel time from urban centers. Wilderness areas took variable forms in relation to carbon stock, species richness, and proximity to urban centers, where 10% of wilderness areas represented high carbon and species richness, 20% low carbon and species richness, and 3% high levels of remoteness (>48 h), carbon, and species richness. Approximately 35% of all remaining wilderness in 2013 was accessible in <24 h of travel time from urban centers. Although the construct of wilderness can be used to secure benefits in specific contexts, its application in conservation must account for contextual and social implications. The diverse characterization of wilderness under a global environmental conservation lens shows that a nuanced framing and application of the construct is needed to improve understanding, communication, and retention of its variable forms as industry-free places.

Formas de las Áreas Silvestres y sus Implicaciones para las Políticas y la Conservación Mundial Resumen Con la intención de asegurar paisajes terrestres y marinos libres de la industria, la protección de las áreas silvestres entró a la política internacional por primera vez como un objetivo formal en el primer borrador del Marco de Trabajo para la Biodiversidad Mundial Post-2020 bajo el Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica. Con este incremento en la presencia dentro de la política internacional, es oportuno considerar el grado al que el concepto de área silvestre ayuda a los objetivos de conservación mundial. Evaluamos este concepto mediante la superposición de mapas de la presión humana acumulada recientemente actualizados que brindan una definición a escala mundial de las tierras libres de industria con mapas del stock de carbono, riqueza de especies y el tiempo de traslado terrestre desde los centros urbanos. Las áreas silvestres mostraron formas variables con respecto al stock de carbono, la riqueza de especies y la cercanía a los centros urbanos, de las cuales el 10% representó una elevada riqueza de especies y presencia de carbono, el 20% una baja riqueza de especies y presencia de carbono y el 3% una elevada lejanía (>48 horas), presencia de carbono y riqueza de especies. Aproximadamente el 35% de todas las áreas silvestres en 2013 era accesible en <24 horas de traslado desde los centros urbanos. Aunque el concepto de áreas silvestres puede usarse para garantizar beneficios en contextos específicos, su aplicación en la conservación debe considerar las implicaciones contextuales y sociales. La caracterización diversa de las áreas silvestres bajo el lente de la conservación ambiental mundial muestra que un encuadre matizado y la aplicación de este concepto son necesarios para aumentar el conocimiento, la comunicación y la retención de sus formas variables como lugares libres de industria.

Global rarity of intact coastal regions.

Management of the land-sea interface is essential for global conservation and sustainability objectives because coastal regions maintain natural processes that support biodiversity and the livelihood of billions of people. However, assessments of coastal regions have focused strictly on either the terrestrial or marine realm. Consequently, understanding of the overall state of Earth's coastal regions is poor. We integrated the terrestrial human footprint and marine cumulative human impact maps in a global assessment of the anthropogenic pressures affecting coastal regions. Of coastal regions globally, 15.5% had low anthropogenic pressure, mostly in Canada, Russia, and Greenland. Conversely, 47.9% of coastal regions were heavily affected by humanity, and in most countries (84.1%) >50% of their coastal regions were degraded. Nearly half (43.3%) of protected areas across coastal regions were exposed to high human pressures. To meet global sustainability objectives, all nations must undertake greater actions to preserve and restore the coastal regions within their borders.

costa, huella humana, impacto humano cumulativo, litoral, presión humana, restauración, tierras vírgenes Resumen El manejo de la interfaz entre la tierra y el mar es esencial para los objetivos mundiales de conservación y sustentabilidad ya que las regiones costeras mantienen los procesos naturales que sostienen a la biodiversidad y al sustento de miles de millones de personas. Sin embargo, los análisis de las regiones costeras se han enfocado estrictamente en el ámbito marino o en el terrestre, pero no en ambos. Por consiguiente, el conocimiento del estado general de las regiones costeras del planeta es muy pobre. Integramos la huella terrestre humana y mapas marinos del impacto humano cumulativo en un análisis global de las presiones antropogénicas que afectan las áreas costeras. De las áreas costeras de todo el mundo, el 15.5% tuvieron una presión antropogénica reducida, principalmente en Canadá, Rusia y Groenlandia. En cambio, el 47.9% de las regiones costeras estuvieron fuertemente afectas por la humanidad, y en la mayoría de los países (84.1%) >50% de sus regiones litorales se encuentran degradadas. Casi la mitad (43.3%) de las áreas protegidas en las regiones costeras tienen un grado de exposición a fuertes presiones humanas. Para cumplir los objetivos mundiales de sustentabilidad, todos los países deben emprender mejores acciones para preservar y restaurar las regiones litorales dentro de sus fronteras.

Tropical forests are home to over half of the world's vertebrate species.

Tropical forests are renowned for their astonishing diversity of life, but the fundamental question of how many species occur in tropical forests remains unanswered. Using geographic range maps and data on species habitat associations, we determined that tropical forests harbor 62% of global terrestrial vertebrate species, more than twice the number found in any other terrestrial biome on Earth. Up to 29% of global vertebrate species are endemic to tropical forests, with more than 20% of these species at risk of extinction. Humid tropical forests (also known as tropical rainforests) and the Neotropics dominate as centers of species diversity, harboring more than 90% and nearly half of all tropical forest vertebrates, respectively. To maintain the biodiversity that underpins the ecosystem functions and services essential for human well-being, we emphasize the critical importance of environmental policies aimed at reducing tropical deforestation and mitigating deleterious anthropogenic pressures on these imperiled ecosystems.

The importance of Indigenous Peoples' lands for the conservation of terrestrial mammals.

Indigenous Peoples' lands cover over one-quarter of Earth's surface, a significant proportion of which is still free from industrial-level human impacts. As a result, Indigenous Peoples and their lands are crucial for the long-term persistence of Earth's biodiversity and ecosystem services. Yet, information on species composition on these lands globally remains largely unknown. We conducted the first comprehensive analysis of terrestrial mammal composition across mapped Indigenous lands based on data on area of habitat (AOH) for 4460 mammal species assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. We overlaid each species' AOH on a current map of Indigenous lands and found that 2695 species (60% of assessed mammals) had ≥10% of their ranges on Indigenous Peoples' lands and 1009 species (23%) had >50% of their ranges on these lands. For threatened species, 473 (47%) occurred on Indigenous lands with 26% having >50% of their habitat on these lands. We also found that 935 mammal species (131 categorized as threatened) had ≥ 10% of their range on Indigenous Peoples' lands that had low human pressure. Our results show how important Indigenous Peoples' lands are to the successful implementation of conservation and sustainable development agendas worldwide.

La Importancia de las Tierras de los Pueblos Indígenas para la Conservación de los Mamíferos Terrestres Resumen Las tierras pertenecientes a pueblos indígenas cubren más de un cuarto de la superficie del planeta, una proporción importante que se encuentra aún libre de impactos humanos a nivel industrial. Como resultado, los pueblos indígenas y sus tierras son cruciales para la persistencia a largo plazo de la biodiversidad en la Tierra y de los servicios ecosistemicos. Sin embargo, la información sobre la composición de especies en estas tierras a nivel mundial todavía permanece desconocida en su mayoría. Realizamos el primer análisis integral de la composición de mamíferos terrestres a lo largo de las tierras indígenas mapeadas con base en los datos sobre el área del hábitat (ADH) de 4,460 especies de mamíferos valorados por la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza. Sobrepusimos el ADH de cada especie en un mapa actual de tierras indígenas y encontramos que 2,695 especies (60% de los mamíferos valorados) tienen ≥10% de su distribución dentro de tierras de pueblos indígenas y que 1,009 especies (23%) tienen >50% de su distribución dentro de estas tierras. De las especies amenazadas, 473 (47%) ocurrieron en tierras indígenas.También descubrimos que 935 especies de mamíferos (131 categorizadas como amenazadas) tienen ≥ 10% de su distribución dentro de tierras de pueblos indígenas con baja presión humana. Nuestros resultados muestran cuán importantes son las tierras de los pueblos indígenas para la implementación exitosa de la conservación y las agendas globales de desarrollo sustentable.

The human footprint represents observable human pressures: Reply to Kennedy et al.

The Human Modification map differs in important ways from the map of the human footprint, such as its mapping of widespread direct modification of much of the world's polar regions. An extensive validation reveals large inaccuracies in the Human Modification map, and that the human footprint tends to better represent actual observable human pressures on the ground. This article is a commentary on Kennedy et al., 25, 811-826; See also the Commentary on this article by Kennedy et al., 26, 333-336.

Renewable energy development threatens many globally important biodiversity areas.

Transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy is fundamental for halting anthropogenic climate change. However, renewable energy facilities can be land-use intensive and impact conservation areas, and little attention has been given to whether the aggregated effect of energy transitions poses a substantial threat to global biodiversity. Here, we assess the extent of current and likely future renewable energy infrastructure associated with onshore wind, hydropower and solar photovoltaic generation, within three important conservation areas: protected areas (PAs), Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) and Earth's remaining wilderness. We identified 2,206 fully operational renewable energy facilities within the boundaries of these conservation areas, with another 922 facilities under development. Combined, these facilities span and are degrading 886 PAs, 749 KBAs and 40 distinct wilderness areas. Two trends are particularly concerning. First, while the majority of historical overlap occurs in Western Europe, the renewable electricity facilities under development increasingly overlap with conservation areas in Southeast Asia, a globally important region for biodiversity. Second, this next wave of renewable energy infrastructure represents a ~30% increase in the number of PAs and KBAs impacted and could increase the number of compromised wilderness areas by ~60%. If the world continues to rapidly transition towards renewable energy these areas will face increasing pressure to allow infrastructure expansion. Coordinated planning of renewable energy expansion and biodiversity conservation is essential to avoid conflicts that compromise their respective objectives.

Global human influence maps reveal clear opportunities in conserving Earth's remaining intact terrestrial ecosystems.

Leading up to the Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties 15, there is momentum around setting bold conservation targets. Yet, it remains unclear how much of Earth's land area remains without significant human influence and where this land is located. We compare four recent global maps of human influences across Earth's land, Anthromes, Global Human Modification, Human Footprint and Low Impact Areas, to answer these questions. Despite using various methodologies and data, these different spatial assessments independently estimate similar percentages of the Earth's terrestrial surface as having very low (20%-34%) and low (48%-56%) human influence. Three out of four spatial assessments agree on 46% of the non-permanent ice- or snow-covered land as having low human influence. However, much of the very low and low influence portions of the planet are comprised of cold (e.g., boreal forests, montane grasslands and tundra) or arid (e.g., deserts) landscapes. Only four biomes (boreal forests, deserts, temperate coniferous forests and tundra) have a majority of datasets agreeing that at least half of their area has very low human influence. More concerning, <1% of temperate grasslands, tropical coniferous forests and tropical dry forests have very low human influence across most datasets, and tropical grasslands, mangroves and montane grasslands also have <1% of land identified as very low influence across all datasets. These findings suggest that about half of Earth's terrestrial surface has relatively low human influence and offers opportunities for proactive conservation actions to retain the last intact ecosystems on the planet. However, though the relative abundance of ecosystem areas with low human influence varies widely by biome, conserving these last intact areas should be a high priority before they are completely lost.

A global strategy for road building.

The number and extent of roads will expand dramatically this century. Globally, at least 25 million kilometres of new roads are anticipated by 2050; a 60% increase in the total length of roads over that in 2010. Nine-tenths of all road construction is expected to occur in developing nations, including many regions that sustain exceptional biodiversity and vital ecosystem services. Roads penetrating into wilderness or frontier areas are a major proximate driver of habitat loss and fragmentation, wildfires, overhunting and other environmental degradation, often with irreversible impacts on ecosystems. Unfortunately, much road proliferation is chaotic or poorly planned, and the rate of expansion is so great that it often overwhelms the capacity of environmental planners and managers. Here we present a global scheme for prioritizing road building. This large-scale zoning plan seeks to limit the environmental costs of road expansion while maximizing its benefits for human development, by helping to increase agricultural production, which is an urgent priority given that global food demand could double by mid-century. Our analysis identifies areas with high environmental values where future road building should be avoided if possible, areas where strategic road improvements could promote agricultural development with relatively modest environmental costs, and 'conflict areas' where road building could have sizeable benefits for agriculture but with serious environmental damage. Our plan provides a template for proactively zoning and prioritizing roads during the most explosive era of road expansion in human history.

National contributions to global ecosystem values.

Current conservation templates prioritize biogeographic regions with high intensity ecosystem values, such as exceptional species richness or threat. Intensity-based targets are an important consideration in global efforts, but they do not capture all available opportunities to conserve ecosystem values, including those that accrue in low intensity over large areas. We assess six globally-significant ecosystem values-intact wilderness, freshwater availability, productive marine environments, breeding habitat for migratory wildlife, soil carbon storage, and latitudinal potential for range shift in the face of climate change-to highlight opportunities for high-impact broadly-distributed contributions to global conservation. Nations can serve as a cohesive block of policy that can profoundly influence conservation outcomes. Contributions to global ecosystem values that exceed what is predicted by a nation's area alone, can give rise to countries with the capacity to act as 'conservation superpowers', such as Canada and Russia. For these conservation superpowers, a relatively small number of national policies can have environmental repercussions for the rest of the world.

The extent and predictability of the biodiversity-carbon correlation.

Protecting biomass carbon stocks to mitigate climate change has direct implications for biodiversity conservation. Yet, evidence that a positive association exists between carbon density and species richness is contrasting. Here, we test how this association varies (1) across spatial extents and (2) as a function of how strongly carbon and species richness depend on environmental variables. We found the correlation weakens when moving from larger extents, e.g. realms, to narrower extents, e.g. ecoregions. For ecoregions, a positive correlation emerges when both species richness and carbon density vary as functions of the same environmental variables (climate, soil, elevation). In 20% of tropical ecoregions, there are opportunities to pursue carbon conservation with direct biodiversity co-benefits, while other ecoregions require careful planning for both species and carbon to avoid potentially perverse outcomes. The broad assumption of a linear relationship between carbon and biodiversity can lead to undesired outcomes.

Bias in protected-area location and its effects on long-term aspirations of biodiversity conventions.

To contribute to the aspirations of recent international biodiversity conventions, protected areas (PAs) must be strategically located and not simply established on economically marginal lands as they have in the past. With refined international commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity to target protected areas in places of "importance to biodiversity," perhaps they may now be. We analyzed location biases in PAs globally over historic (pre-2004) and recent periods. Specifically, we examined whether the location of protected areas are more closely associated with high concentrations of threatened vertebrate species or with areas of low agricultural opportunity costs. We found that both old and new protected areas did not target places with high concentrations of threatened vertebrate species. Instead, they appeared to be established in locations that minimize conflict with agriculturally suitable lands. This entrenchment of past trends has substantial implications for the contributions these protected areas are making to international commitments to conserve biodiversity. If protected-area growth from 2004 to 2014 had strategically targeted unrepresented threatened vertebrates, >30 times more species (3086 or 2553 potential vs. 85 actual new species represented) would have been protected for the same area or the same cost as the actual expansion. With the land available for conservation declining, nations must urgently focus new protection on places that provide for the conservation outcomes outlined in international treaties.

Gaps and opportunities for the World Heritage Convention to contribute to global wilderness conservation.

Wilderness areas are ecologically intact landscapes predominantly free of human uses, especially industrial-scale activities that result in substantial biophysical disturbance. This definition does not exclude land and resource use by local communities who depend on such areas for subsistence and bio-cultural connections. Wilderness areas are important for biodiversity conservation and sustain key ecological processes and ecosystem services that underpin planetary life-support systems. Despite these widely recognized benefits and values of wilderness, they are insufficiently protected and are consequently being rapidly eroded. There are increasing calls for multilateral environmental agreements to make a greater and more systematic contribution to wilderness conservation before it is too late. We created a global map of remaining terrestrial wilderness following the established last-of-the-wild method, which identifies the 10% of areas with the lowest human pressure within each of Earth's 62 biogeographic realms and identifies the 10 largest contiguous areas and all contiguous areas >10,000 km2 . We used our map to assess wilderness coverage by the World Heritage Convention and to identify gaps in coverage. We then identified large nationally designated protected areas with good wilderness coverage within these gaps. One-quarter of natural and mixed (i.e., sites of both natural and cultural value) World Heritage Sites (WHS) contained wilderness (total of 545,307 km2 ), which is approximately 1.8% of the world's wilderness extent. Many WHS had excellent wilderness coverage, for example, the Okavango Delta in Botswana (11,914 km2 ) and the Central Suriname Nature Reserve (16,029 km2 ). However, 22 (35%) of the world's terrestrial biorealms had no wilderness representation within WHS. We identified 840 protected areas of >500 km2 that were predominantly wilderness (>50% of their area) and represented 18 of the 22 missing biorealms. These areas offer a starting point for assessing the potential for the designation of new WHSs that could help increase wilderness representation on the World Heritage list. We urge the World Heritage Convention to ensure that the ecological integrity and outstanding universal value of existing WHS with wilderness values are preserved.