Four challenges to an effective national nature assessment.

Comprehensive biodiversity assessments play an essential role in strengthening global and national conservation strategies. The recently announced first U.S. National Nature Assessment (NNA) provides an unparalleled opportunity to comprehensively review status and trends of biodiversity at all levels. This broad context can help in the coordination of actions to conserve individual species and ecosystems. The scientific assessments that informed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted at the 2022 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference of parties provide models for synthesizing information on trends at multiple levels of biodiversity, including decline in abundance and distribution of species, loss of populations and genetic diversity, and degradation and loss of ecosystems and their services. The assessments then relate these trends to data on drivers of biodiversity loss and pathways to their mitigation. The U.S. NNA can augment such global analyses and avoid the pitfalls encountered by previous U.S. efforts by ensuring policy-relevant design, data accessibility, and inclusivity in process and product and by incorporating spatial data relevant to national and subnational audiences. Although the United States is not formally a CBD party, an effective NNA should take full advantage of the global context by including indicators adopted at the 2022 meeting and incorporating an independent review mechanism that supports periodic stocktaking and ratcheting up of ambition in response to identified shortfalls in stemming biodiversity loss. The challenges to design of an effective U.S. assessment are relevant globally as nations develop assessments and reporting to support the new global biodiversity framework's targets. By considering and incorporating the diverse ways in which society values and benefits from nature, such assessments can help bridge the gap between research and conservation practice and communicate the extent of the biodiversity crisis to the public, fostering broad-based support for transformative change in humanity's relationship to the natural world.

Cuatro obstáculos para una eficaz evaluación nacional de la naturaleza Resumen Las evaluaciones completas de la biodiversidad tienen un papel esencial en el fortalecimiento de las estrategias de conservación nacional y mundial. La recién anunciada Evaluación Nacional de la Naturaleza (ENN) de los EE. UU. proporciona una oportunidad sin precedentes para revisar de manera completa el estado y las tendencias de la biodiversidad en todos los niveles. Este contexto generalizado puede ayudar a la coordinación de acciones para la conservación de especies individuales y ecosistemas. Las evaluaciones científicas que guiaron el Marco Mundial de la Biodiversidad de Kumming-Montreal adoptado en la conferencia de las partes de la Convención sobre la Diversidad Biológica (CBD) de 2022 proporcionan modelos para sintetizar la información sobre las tendencias de la biodiversidad a varios niveles, incluyendo la declinación en abundancia y distribución de especies, pérdida de poblaciones y diversidad genética y la degradación y pérdida de los ecosistemas y sus servicios. Después de esto, las evaluaciones relacionan estas tendencias con la información sobre los causantes de la pérdida de la biodiversidad y las maneras de mitigarla. La ENN de los EE. UU. pueden aumentar estos análisis mundiales y evitar las dificultades enfrentadas por los esfuerzos previos al garantizar un diseño relevante para las políticas, la disponibilidad de datos y la inclusión en el proceso y el producto y también mediante la incorporación de datos espaciales relevantes para el público nacional y subnacional. Aunque los EE. UU. no son una parte formal de la CBD, una ENN efectiva debería aprovechar de lleno el contexto global al incluir los indicadores adoptados en la reunión de 2022 e incorporar un mecanismo independiente de revisión que respalde el balance periódico y el aumento de la ambición en respuesta a las deficiencias detectadas en la contención de la pérdida de biodiversidad. Los retos para diseñar una evaluación estadunidense son relevantes a nivel mundial ya que los países evalúan y reportan para mantener los objetivos mundiales de biodiversidad post-2020. Si consideramos las diferentes maneras en las que la sociedad valora y se beneficia de la naturaleza, dichas evaluaciones pueden ayudar a cerrar la brecha entre la investigación y la práctica de la conservación y a comunicarle al público el nivel de la crisis de la biodiversidad, lo que fomenta el apoyo generalizado para transformar la relación entre la humanidad y el mundo natural.

Plant and animal endemism in the eastern Andean slope: challenges to conservation.

BACKGROUND: The Andes-Amazon basin of Peru and Bolivia is one of the most data-poor, biologically rich, and rapidly changing areas of the world. Conservation scientists agree that this area hosts extremely high endemism, perhaps the highest in the world, yet we know little about the geographic distributions of these species and ecosystems within country boundaries. To address this need, we have developed conservation data on endemic biodiversity (~800 species of birds, mammals, amphibians, and plants) and terrestrial ecological systems (~90; groups of vegetation communities resulting from the action of ecological processes, substrates, and/or environmental gradients) with which we conduct a fine scale conservation prioritization across the Amazon watershed of Peru and Bolivia. We modelled the geographic distributions of 435 endemic plants and all 347 endemic vertebrate species, from existing museum and herbaria specimens at a regional conservation practitioner's scale (1:250,000-1:1,000,000), based on the best available tools and geographic data. We mapped ecological systems, endemic species concentrations, and irreplaceable areas with respect to national level protected areas. RESULTS: We found that sizes of endemic species distributions ranged widely (< 20 km2 to > 200,000 km2) across the study area. Bird and mammal endemic species richness was greatest within a narrow 2500-3000 m elevation band along the length of the Andes Mountains. Endemic amphibian richness was highest at 1000-1500 m elevation and concentrated in the southern half of the study area. Geographical distribution of plant endemism was highly taxon-dependent. Irreplaceable areas, defined as locations with the highest number of species with narrow ranges, overlapped slightly with areas of high endemism, yet generally exhibited unique patterns across the study area by species group. We found that many endemic species and ecological systems are lacking national-level protection; a third of endemic species have distributions completely outside of national protected areas. Protected areas cover only 20% of areas of high endemism and 20% of irreplaceable areas. Almost 40% of the 91 ecological systems are in serious need of protection (= < 2% of their ranges protected). CONCLUSIONS: We identify for the first time, areas of high endemic species concentrations and high irreplaceability that have only been roughly indicated in the past at the continental scale. We conclude that new complementary protected areas are needed to safeguard these endemics and ecosystems. An expansion in protected areas will be challenged by geographically isolated micro-endemics, varied endemic patterns among taxa, increasing deforestation, resource extraction, and changes in climate. Relying on pre-existing collections, publically accessible datasets and tools, this working framework is exportable to other regions plagued by incomplete conservation data.