Local biodiversity is higher inside than outside terrestrial protected areas worldwide
By Claudia L. Gray, S. Hill, Tim Newbold, Lawrence N. Hudson, L. Börger, S. Contu, A. Hoskins, Simon Ferrier, Andy Purvis, Jörn P. W. Scharlemann. Nature Communications, 2016
711 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Protected areas are widely considered essential for biodiversity conservation. However, few global studies have demonstrated that protection benefits a broad range of species. Here, using a new global biodiversity database with unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage, we compare four biodiversity measures at sites sampled in multiple land uses inside and outside protected areas. Globally, species richness is 10.6% higher and abundance 14.5% higher in samples taken inside protected areas compared with samples taken outside, but neither rarefaction-based richness nor endemicity differ significantly. Importantly, we show that the positive effects of protection are mostly attributable to differences in land use between protected and unprotected sites. Nonetheless, even within some human-dominated land uses, species richness and abundance are higher in protected sites. Our results reinforce the global importance of protected areas but suggest that protection does not consistently benefit species with small ranges or increase the variety of ecological niches. Protected areas are thought essential for biodiversity conservation, but few studies confirm that protection benefits species. Here, Gray and Hill et al. analyse a global, taxonomically broad database to show that local species richness and abundance are higher inside protected areas than outside.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e1c3c0830f409ae7ba8461e15f30506a4684a537
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Citations in the corpus
- A Global Deal For Nature: Guiding principles, milestones, and targets (2019, neutral): “Protected areas are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation, and studies document that well-managed reserves are far more effective in safeguarding biodiversity than are other forms of land use ( 19 ).”
- Landscapes that work for biodiversity and people (2018, background): “Given the dire situation facingmany species and the expectation of further species losses and shifts in ecosystem composition due to climate change (2, 4, 11), ceasing further habitat conversion completely and protecting large regions of Earth effectively are critical necessities for conservation (6”