Conservation planning for retention, not just protection.

Most protected area (PA) planning aims to improve biota representation within the PA system, but this does not necessarily achieve the best outcomes for biota retention across regions when we also consider habitat loss in areas outside the PA system. Here, we assess the implications that different PA expansion strategies can have on the retention of species habitat across an entire region. Using retention of forest habitat for Colombia's 550 forest-dependent bird species as our outcome variable, we found that when a minimum of 30% of each species' habitat was included in the PA system, a pattern of PA expansion targeting areas at highest deforestation risk (risk-prevention) led to the retention, on average, of 7.2% more forest habitat per species by 2050 than did a pattern that targeted areas at lowest risk (risk-avoidance). The risk-prevention approach cost more per km2 of land conserved, but it was more cost-effective in retaining habitat in the landscape (50%-69% lower cost per km2 of avoided deforestation). To have the same effectiveness preventing habitat loss in Colombia, the risk-avoidance approach would require more than twice as much protected area, costing three times more in the process. Protected area expansion should focus on the contributions of PAs to outcomes not only within PA systems themselves, but across entire regions.

La mayor parte de la planificación de áreas protegidas (AP) tiene como objetivo mejorar la representación de la biota dentro del sistema de AP, pero esto no necesariamente logra los mejores resultados para la retención de biota a nivel de paisaje cuando también consideramos la pérdida de hábitat en áreas fuera del sistema de AP. Aquí evaluamos las implicaciones que diferentes estrategias de expansión de AP pueden tener en la retención del hábitat de las especies en toda una región. Utilizando la retención de hábitat forestal para las 550 especies de aves dependientes de bosque de Colombia como nuestra variable de resultado, encontramos que cuando un mínimo del 30% del hábitat de cada especie es incluido en el sistema de AP, se observó que un patrón de expansión de AP dirigido a áreas con mayor riesgo de deforestación (prevención de riesgos) condujo a la retención, en promedio, de un 7.2% más de hábitat por especie para 2050 que un patrón enfocado en áreas con menor riesgo (evasión de riesgos). El enfoque de prevención de riesgos costó más por km2 de tierra conservada, pero fue más rentable para retener el hábitat en el paisaje (entre un 50% y un 69% menos costo por km2 de deforestación evitada). Para tener la misma eficacia en la prevención de la pérdida de hábitat en Colombia, el enfoque de evasión de riesgos requeriría más del doble de área protegida, lo que costaría tres veces más en el proceso. La expansión de las AP debería centrarse en las contribuciones de las AP a los resultados no sólo dentro de los propios sistemas de AP, sino en regiones enteras.

Megafauna extinctions produce idiosyncratic Anthropocene assemblages.

The "trophic downgrading of planet Earth" refers to the systematic decline of the world's largest vertebrates. However, our understanding of why megafauna extinction risk varies through time and the importance of site- or species-specific factors remain unclear. Here, we unravel the unexpected variability in remaining terrestrial megafauna assemblages across 10 Southeast Asian tropical forests. Consistent with global trends, every landscape experienced Holocene and/or Anthropocene megafauna extirpations, and the four most disturbed landscapes experienced 2.5 times more extirpations than the six least disturbed landscapes. However, there were no consistent size- or guild-related trends, no two tropical forests had identical assemblages, and the abundance of four species showed positive relationships with forest degradation and humans. Our results suggest that the region's megafauna assemblages are the product of a convoluted geoclimatic legacy interacting with modern disturbances and that some megafauna may persist in degraded tropical forests near settlements with sufficient poaching controls.

The ecology of the banded civet (Hemigalus derbyanus) in Southeast Asia with implications for mesopredator release, zoonotic diseases, and conservation.

Habitat loss and degradation threaten forest specialist wildlife species, but some generalist mesopredators exploit disturbed areas and human-derived food, which brings them into closer contact with humans. Mesopredator release is also important for human health for known zoonotic disease reservoirs, such as Asian civets (Viverridae family), since this group includes the intermediator species for the SARS-CoV-1 outbreak. Here we use camera trapping to evaluate the habitat associations of the widespread banded civet (Hemigalus derbyanus) across its range in Southeast Asia. At the regional scale, banded civet detections among published studies were positively associated with forest cover and negatively associated with human population. At the local scale (within a landscape), hierarchical modeling of new camera trapping showed that abundance was negatively associated with forest loss and positively associated with distance to rivers. These results do not support mesopredator release and suggest a low likelihood overlap with humans in degraded habitats and, therefore, a low risk of zoonotic disease transmission from this species in the wild. We also estimate that banded civet distribution has contracted to under 21% of its currently recognized IUCN Red List range, only 12% of which falls within protected areas, and a precipitous recent decline in population size. Accordingly, we suggest the banded civet's Red List status should be re-evaluated in light of our findings.

Language barriers in global bird conservation.

Multiple languages being spoken within a species' distribution can impede communication among conservation stakeholders, the compilation of scientific information, and the development of effective conservation actions. Here, we investigate the number of official languages spoken within the distributions of 10,863 bird species to identify which species might be particularly affected by consequences of language barriers. We show that 1587 species have 10 languages or more spoken within their distributions. Threatened and migratory species have significantly more languages spoken within their distributions, when controlling for range size. Particularly high numbers of species with many languages within their distribution are found in Eastern Europe, Russia and central and western Asia. Global conservation efforts would benefit from implementing guidelines to overcome language barriers, especially in regions with high species and language diversity.

Southeast Asian protected areas are effective in conserving forest cover and forest carbon stocks compared to unprotected areas.

Protected areas aim to conserve nature, ecosystem services, and cultural values; however, they have variable success in doing so under high development pressure. Southeast Asian protected areas faced the highest level of human pressure at the turn of the twenty-first century. To estimate their effectiveness in conserving forest cover and forest carbon stocks for 2000-2018, we used statistical matching methods to control for the non-random location of protected areas, to compare protection against a matched counterfactual. We found Southeast Asian protected areas had three times less forest cover loss than similar landscapes without protection. Protected areas that had completed management reporting using the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) conserved significantly more forest cover and forest carbon stocks than those that had not. Management scores were positively associated with the level of carbon emissions avoided, but not the level of forest cover loss avoided. Our study is the first to find that METT scores could predict the level of carbon emissions avoided in protected areas. Given that only 11% of protected areas in Southeast Asia had completed METT surveys, our results illustrate the need to scale-up protected area management effectiveness reporting programs to improve their effectiveness for conserving forests, and for storing and sequestering carbon.

Tapping into non-English-language science for the conservation of global biodiversity.

The widely held assumption that any important scientific information would be available in English underlies the underuse of non-English-language science across disciplines. However, non-English-language science is expected to bring unique and valuable scientific information, especially in disciplines where the evidence is patchy, and for emergent issues where synthesising available evidence is an urgent challenge. Yet such contribution of non-English-language science to scientific communities and the application of science is rarely quantified. Here, we show that non-English-language studies provide crucial evidence for informing global biodiversity conservation. By screening 419,679 peer-reviewed papers in 16 languages, we identified 1,234 non-English-language studies providing evidence on the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation interventions, compared to 4,412 English-language studies identified with the same criteria. Relevant non-English-language studies are being published at an increasing rate in 6 out of the 12 languages where there were a sufficient number of relevant studies. Incorporating non-English-language studies can expand the geographical coverage (i.e., the number of 2° × 2° grid cells with relevant studies) of English-language evidence by 12% to 25%, especially in biodiverse regions, and taxonomic coverage (i.e., the number of species covered by the relevant studies) by 5% to 32%, although they do tend to be based on less robust study designs. Our results show that synthesising non-English-language studies is key to overcoming the widespread lack of local, context-dependent evidence and facilitating evidence-based conservation globally. We urge wider disciplines to rigorously reassess the untapped potential of non-English-language science in informing decisions to address other global challenges. Please see the Supporting information files for Alternative Language Abstracts.

Effects of spatial autocorrelation and sampling design on estimates of protected area effectiveness.

Estimating the effectiveness of protected areas (PAs) in reducing deforestation is useful to support decisions on whether to invest in better management of areas already protected or to create new ones. Statistical matching is commonly used to assess this effectiveness, but spatial autocorrelation and regional differences in protection effectiveness are frequently overlooked. Using Colombia as a case study, we employed statistical matching to account for confounding factors in park location and accounted for for spatial autocorrelation to determine statistical significance. We compared the performance of different matching procedures-ways of generating matching pairs at different scales-in estimating PA effectiveness. Differences in matching procedures affected covariate similarity between matched pairs (balance) and estimates of PA effectiveness in reducing deforestation. Independent matching yielded the greatest balance. On average 95% of variables in each region were balanced with independent matching, whereas 33% of variables were balanced when using the method that performed worst. The best estimates suggested that average deforestation inside protected areas in Colombia was 40% lower than in matched sites. Protection significantly reduced deforestation, but PA effectiveness differed among regions. Protected areas in Caribe were the most effective, whereas those in Orinoco and Pacific were least effective. Our results demonstrate that accounting for spatial autocorrelation and using independent matching for each subset of data is needed to infer the effectiveness of protection in reducing deforestation. Not accounting for spatial autocorrelation can distort the assessment of protection effectiveness, increasing type I and II errors and inflating effect size. Our method allowed improved estimates of protection effectiveness across scales and under different conditions and can be applied to other regions to effectively assess PA performance.

Efectos de la Autocorrelación Espacial y el Diseño del Muestreo sobre las Estimaciones de la Efectividad de Áreas Protegidas Resumen La estimación de la efectividad de las áreas protegidas (AP) para reducir la deforestación es útil al momento de respaldar las decisiones que eligen entre invertir en un mejor manejo de las áreas ya protegidas o crear áreas nuevas. El emparejamiento estadístico es la herramienta utilizada con mayor frecuencia para evaluar esta efectividad, pero casi siempre se ignora la autocorrelación especial y las diferencias regionales en la efectividad de la protección. Con Colombia como caso de estudio, empleamos un emparejamiento estadístico para controlar el efecto de factores relacionados con la ubicación la ubicación de los parques y he incluimos el efecto de la autocorrelación especial para determinar la significancia estadística. Comparamos el desempeño de los diferentes procedimientos de emparejamiento - las maneras de generar pares a diferentes escalas - en la estimación de la efectividad de las AP. Las diferencias en los procedimientos de emparejamiento afectaron la similitud de la covarianza entre los pares emparejados (balance) y la estimación de la efectividad de las AP en la reducción de la deforestación. El emparejamiento independiente produjo el mayor balance. En promedio, el 95% de las variables en cada región estuvo balanceado con el emparejamiento independiente, mientras que el 24% de las variables estuvo balanceado cuando se usó el método con el peor desempeño. Las mejores estimaciones sugieren que la deforestación media dentro de las áreas protegidas en Colombia era 40% menor que en los sitios emparejados emparejados. La protección redujo significativamente la deforestación, aunque la efectividad de las AP difirió entre las regiones. Las AP en la región Caribe fueron las más efectivas, mientras que aquellas en la Orinoquía y el Pacífico fueron las menos efectivas. Nuestros resultados demuestran que se necesita considerar la autocorrelación espacial y usar el emparejamiento independiente para cada subconjunto de datos para inferir la efectividad de la protección en la reducción de la deforestación. Si no se considera la autocorrelación espacial, se pueden distorsionar los estimativos de la efectividad de la protección, incrementando los errores de tipo I y II e inflando el tamaño del efecto. Nuestro método permitió obtener mejores estimaciones de la efectividad de la protección en todas las escalas y bajo diferentes condiciones y puede aplicarse a otras regiones para evaluar de manera efectiva el desempeño de las AP.

One-third of global protected land is under intense human pressure.

In an era of massive biodiversity loss, the greatest conservation success story has been the growth of protected land globally. Protected areas are the primary defense against biodiversity loss, but extensive human activity within their boundaries can undermine this. Using the most comprehensive global map of human pressure, we show that 6 million square kilometers (32.8%) of protected land is under intense human pressure. For protected areas designated before the Convention on Biological Diversity was ratified in 1992, 55% have since experienced human pressure increases. These increases were lowest in large, strict protected areas, showing that they are potentially effective, at least in some nations. Transparent reporting on human pressure within protected areas is now critical, as are global targets aimed at efforts required to halt biodiversity loss.

Need for conservation planning in postconflict Colombia.

More than 80% of recent major armed conflicts have taken place in biodiversity hotspots, including the Tropical Andes which is home to the world's highest concentrations of bird, mammal, and amphibian species, and more than ten percent of all vascular plant species (Mittermeier et al. 2004; Hanson et al. 2009). Armed conflicts not only seriously impact social and political systems, but also have important ramifications for biodiversity, from the time preparations for conflict start through to the post-conflict period (Machlis & Hanson 2008). Tropical forests have been identified as particularly vulnerable during the post-conflict period, when areas made inaccessible during hostilities become open to development (McNeely 2003). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.