A New Way to Measure the World's Protected Area Coverage

Protected areas are effective at stopping biodiversity loss, but their placement is constrained by the needs of people. Consequently protected areas are often biased toward areas that are unattractive for other human uses. Current reporting metrics that emphasise the total area protected do not account for this bias. To address this problem we propose that the distribution of protected areas be evaluated with an economic metric used to quantify inequality in income— the Gini coefficient. Using a modified version of this measure we discover that 73% of countries have inequitably protected their biodiversity and that common measures of protected area coverage do not adequately reveal this bias. Used in combination with total percentage protection, the Gini coefficient will improve the effectiveness of reporting on the growth of protected area coverage, paving the way for better representation of the world's biodiversity

Targeting Global Protected Area Expansion for Imperiled Biodiversity

Governments have agreed to expand the global protected area network from 13% to 17% of the world's land surface by 2020 (Aichi target 11) and to prevent the further loss of known threatened species (Aichi target 12). These targets are interdependent, as protected areas can stem biodiversity loss when strategically located and effectively managed. However, the global protected area estate is currently biased toward locations that are cheap to protect and away from important areas for biodiversity. Here we use data on the distribution of protected areas and threatened terrestrial birds, mammals, and amphibians to assess current and possible future coverage of these species under the convention. We discover that 17% of the 4,118 threatened vertebrates are not found in a single protected area and that fully 85% are not adequately covered (i.e., to a level consistent with their likely persistence). Using systematic conservation planning, we show that expanding protected areas to reach 17% coverage by protecting the cheapest land, even if ecoregionally representative, would increase the number of threatened vertebrates covered by only 6%. However, the nonlinear relationship between the cost of acquiring land and species coverage means that fivefold more threatened vertebrates could be adequately covered for only 1.5 times the cost of the cheapest solution, if cost efficiency and threatened vertebrates are both incorporated into protected area decision making. These results are robust to known errors in the vertebrate range maps. The Convention on Biological Diversity targets may stimulate major expansion of the global protected area estate. If this expansion is to secure a future for imperiled species, new protected areas must be sited more strategically than is presently the case

Correction: How Much Does it Cost to Expand a Protected Area System? Some Critical Determining Factors and Ranges of Costs for Queensland

Many governments have recently gone on record promising large-scale expansions of protected areas to meet global commitments such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. As systems of protected areas are expanded to be more comprehensive, they are more likely to be implemented if planners have realistic budget estimates so that appropriate funding can be requested. Estimating financial budgets a priori must acknowledge the inherent uncertainties and assumptions associated with key parameters, so planners should recognize these uncertainties by estimating ranges of potential costs. We explore the challenge of budgeting a priori for protected area expansion in the face of uncertainty, specifically considering the future expansion of protected areas in Queensland, Australia. The government has committed to adding ~12 million ha to the reserve system, bringing the total area protected to 20 million ha by 2020. We used Marxan to estimate the costs of potential reserve designs with data on actual land value, market value, transaction costs, and land tenure. With scenarios, we explored three sources of budget variability: size of biodiversity objectives; subdivision of properties; and legal acquisition routes varying with tenure. Depending on the assumptions made, our budget estimates ranged from $214 million to$2.9 billion. Estimates were most sensitive to assumptions made about legal acquisition routes for leasehold land. Unexpected costs (costs encountered by planners when real-world costs deviate from assumed costs) responded non-linearly to inability to subdivide and percentage purchase of private land. A financially conservative approach - one that safeguards against large cost increases while allowing for potential financial windfalls - would involve less optimistic assumptions about acquisition and subdivision to allow Marxan to avoid expensive properties where possible while meeting conservation objectives. We demonstrate how a rigorous analysis can inform discussions about the expansion of systems of protected areas, including the identification of factors that influence budget variability

Global status of and prospects for protection of terrestrial geophysical diversity

Conservation of representative facets of geophysical diversity may help conserve biological diversity as the climate changes. We conducted a global classification of terrestrial geophysical diversity and analyzed how land protection varies across geophysical diversity types. Geophysical diversity was classified in terms of soil type, elevation, and biogeographic realm and then compared to the global distribution of protected areas in 2012. We found that 300 (45%) of 672 broad geophysical diversity types currently meet the Convention on Biological Diversity's Aichi Target 11 of 17% terrestrial areal protection, which suggested that efforts to implement geophysical diversity conservation have a substantive basis on which to build. However, current protected areas were heavily biased toward high elevation and low fertility soils. We assessed 3 scenarios of protected area expansion and found that protection focused on threatened species, if fully implemented, would also protect an additional 29% of geophysical diversity types, ecoregional-focused protection would protect an additional 24%, and a combined scenario would protect an additional 42%. Future efforts need to specifically target low-elevation sites with productive soils for protection and manage for connectivity among geophysical diversity types. These efforts may be hampered by the sheer number of geophysical diversity facets that the world contains, which makes clear target setting and prioritization an important next step

A global assessment of current and future biodiversity vulnerability to habitat loss-climate change interactions

Habitat loss is the greatest threat to biodiversity and rapid, human-forced climate change is likely to exacerbate this. Here we present the first global assessment of current and potential future impacts on biodiversity of a habitat loss and fragmentation-climate change (HLF-CC) interaction. A recent meta-analysis demonstrated that the negative impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation have been disproportionately severe in areas with high temperatures in the warmest month and declining rainfall, although impacts also varied across vegetation types. We compiled an integrated global database of past, current and future climate variables and past vegetation loss to identify ecoregions where (i) past climate change is most likely to have exacerbated the impacts of HLF, and (ii) forecasted climate change is most likely to exacerbate the impacts of HLF in the future. We found that recent climate change is likely (probability >66%) to have exacerbated the impacts of HLF in 120 (18.5%) ecoregions. Impacted ecoregions are disproportionately biodiverse, containing over half (54.1%) of all known terrestrial amphibian, bird, mammal, and reptile species. Forecasts from the RCP8.5 emissions scenario suggest that nearly half of ecoregions globally (n = 283, 43.5%) will become impacted during the 21st century. To minimize ongoing and future HLF-CC impacts on biodiversity, ecoregions where impacts are most likely must become priorities for proactive conservation actions that avoid loss of native vegetation (e.g., protected area establishment). Highly degraded ecoregions where impacts are most likely should be priorities for restoration and candidates for unconventional conservation actions (e.g. translocation of species). (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Conservation planning with dynamic threats: The role of spatial design and priority setting for species' persistence

Conservation actions frequently need to be scheduled because both funding and implementation capacity are limited. Two approaches to scheduling are possible. Maximizing gain (MaxGain) which attempts to maximize representation with protected areas, or minimizing loss (MinLoss) which attempts to minimize total loss both inside and outside protected areas. Conservation planners also choose between setting priorities based solely on biodiversity pattern and considering surrogates for biodiversity processes such as connectivity. We address both biodiversity processes and habitat loss in a scheduling framework by comparing four different prioritization strategies defined by MaxGain and MinLoss applied to biodiversity patterns and processes to solve the dynamic area selection problem with variable area cost. We compared each strategy by estimating predicted species' occurrences within a landscape after 20 years of incremental reservation and loss of habitat. By incorporating species-specific responses to fragmentation, we found that you could improve the performance of conservation strategies. MinLoss was the best approach for conserving both biodiversity pattern and process. However, due to the spatial autocorrelation of habitat loss, reserves selected with this approach tended to become more isolated through time; losing up to 40% of occurrences of edge-sensitive species. Additionally, because of the positive correlation between threats and land cost, reserve networks designed with this approach contained smaller and fewer reserves compared with networks designed with a MaxGain approach. We suggest a possible way to account for the negative effect of fragmentation by considering both local and neighbourhood vulnerability to habitat loss

The performance and potential of protected areas

Originally conceived to conserve iconic landscapes and wildlife, protected areas are now expected to achieve an increasingly diverse set of conservation, social and economic objectives. The amount of land and sea designated as formally protected has markedly increased over the past century, but there is still a major shortfall in political commitments to enhance the coverage and effectiveness of protected areas. Financial support for protected areas is dwarfed by the benefits that they provide, but these returns depend on effective management. A step change involving increased recognition, funding, planning and enforcement is urgently needed if protected areas are going to fulfil their potential

20 million hectares by 2020: protected areas, green infrastructure and green jobs for Queensland

[Extract] In March 2008, the Queensland Government committed to expanding its national park network from 5% to7.5% of the state’s area by 2020 and expanding all protected areas to 20 million ha by 2020, representing 11.6% of the state’s land area. This significant, long overdue initiative recognises that Queensland is the state with the lowest percentage of land area protected and that expanding its reserve system is the highest priority of any Australian state or territory. However, the failure to fund new national park purchases in the 2008-9 budget has meant that the Queensland Government has essentially foregone as much as $12 million in$2 for $1 funding that could have been leveraged as grants from the Australian Government NRS program to buy land for new national parks. The State Government estimated that its parks promise would cost$120 million, or approximately $12 million a year in 2008 dollars over the 10 years to 2020. This would be financed through Eco Fund Queensland – a State-run fund that acts as a clearing house for carbon and environmental offsets. However, Eco Fund has no general revenue or budget dedicated to this task. This study shows, through property-by-property simulations of protected area additions, that the government's projected$12 million a year would be sufficient to achieve its 2020 parks commitment, provided the state obtains matching Australian Government grants and follows the most cost-efficient approach. We also show that this level of investment could be met through the GST collected from tourists visiting new parks, estimated at more than $18 million annually. However, these funding sources would not be sufficient to meet earlier State Government commitments to develop a fully comprehensive protected area system by 2015 that secured every regional ecosystem to at least 8$52 million a year, likely to be split into $40 million a year from the state and$12 million in matching grants from the Australian Government, would be necessary to meet such comprehensiveness targets. The current commitment to expand Queensland’s protected areas is an essential first step in expanding the parks system and a means for providing the green infrastructure and jobs necessary for the state's development. The initiative would also significantly reduce the threat of extinction for many native species; halve erosion, soil loss rates and water pollution in the areas added; conserve highly valuable genetic resources; and enhance Indigenous development, depending on concurrent policy reform