Global gap analysis of cactus species and priority sites for their conservation

Knowing how much biodiversity is captured by protected areas (PAs) is important to meeting country commitments to international conservation agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, and analyzing gaps in species coverage by PAs contributes greatly to improved locating of new PAs and conservation of species. Regardless of their importance, global gap analyses have been conducted only for a few taxonomic groups (e.g., mangroves, corals, amphibians, birds, mammals). We conducted the first global gap analysis for a complete specious plant group, the highly threatened Cactaceae. Using geographic distribution data of 1438 cactus species, we assessed how well the current PA network represents them. We also systematically identified priority areas for conservation of cactus species that met and failed to meet conservation targets accounting for their conservation status. There were 261 species with no coverage by PAs (gap species). A greater percentage of cacti species (18%) lacked protection than mammals (9.7%) and birds (5.6%), and also a greater percentage of threatened cacti species (32%) were outside protected areas than amphibians (26.5%), birds (19.9%), or mammals (16%). The top 17% of the landscape that best captured covered species represented on average 52.9% of species ranges. The priority areas for gap species and the unprotected portion of the ranges of species that only partially met their conservation target (i.e., partial gap) captured on average 75.2% of their ranges, of which 100 were threatened gap species. These findings and knowledge of the threats affecting species provide information that can be used to improve planning for cacti conservation and highlight the importance of assessing the representation of major groups, such as plants, in PAs to determining the performance of the current PA network.     

Effects of protected areas on survival of threatened gibbons in China

Establishing protected areas (PAs) is an essential strategy to reduce biodiversity loss. However, many PAs do not provide adequate protection due to poor funding, inadequate staffing and equipment, and ineffective management. As part of China's recent economic growth, the Chinese government has significantly increased investment in nature reserves over the past 20 years, providing a unique opportunity to evaluate whether PAs can protect threatened species effectively. We compiled data from published literature on populations of gibbons (Hylobatidae), a threatened taxon with cultural significance, that occurred in Chinese reserves after 1980. We evaluated the ability of these PAs to maintain gibbon habitat and populations by comparing forest cover and human disturbance between reserves and their surrounding areas and modeling the impact of reserve characteristics on gibbon population trends. We also assessed the perspective of reserve staff concerning PA management effectiveness through an online survey. Reserves effectively protected gibbon habitat by reducing forest loss and human disturbance; however, half the reserves lost their gibbon populations since being established. Gibbons were more likely to survive in reserves established more recently, at higher elevation, with less forest loss and lower human impact, and that have been relatively well studied. A larger initial population size in the 1980s was positively associated with gibbon persistence. Although staff of all reserves reported increased investment and improved management over the past 20–30 years, no relationship was found between management effectiveness and gibbon population trends. We suggest early and emphatic intervention is critical to stop population decline and prevent extinction.     

A climate-change vulnerability and adaptation assessment for Brazil's protected areas

Brazil hosts the largest expanse of tropical ecosystems within protected areas (PAs), which shelter biodiversity and support traditional human populations. We assessed the vulnerability to climate change of 993 terrestrial and coastal-marine Brazilian PAs by combining indicators of climatic-change hazard with indicators of PA resilience (size, native vegetation cover, and probability of climate-driven vegetation transition). This combination of indicators allows the identification of broad climate-change adaptation pathways. Seventeen PAs (20,611 km²) were highly vulnerable and located mainly in the Atlantic Forest (7 PAs), Cerrado (6), and the Amazon (4). Two hundred fifty-eight PAs (756,569 km²), located primarily in Amazonia, had a medium vulnerability. In the Amazon and western Cerrado, the projected severe climatic change and probability of climate-driven vegetation transition drove vulnerability up, despite the generally good conservation status of PAs. Over 80% of PAs of high or moderate vulnerability are managed by indigenous populations. Hence, besides the potential risks to biodiversity, the traditional knowledge and livelihoods of the people inhabiting these PAs may be threatened. In at least 870 PAs, primarily in the Atlantic Forest and Amazon, adaptation could happen with little or no intervention due to low climate-change hazard, high resilience status, or both. At least 20 PAs in the Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, and Amazonia should be targeted for stronger interventions (e.g., improvement of ecological connectivity), given their low resilience status. Despite being a first attempt to link vulnerability and adaptation in Brazilian PAs, we suggest that some of the PAs identified as highly or moderately vulnerable should be prioritized for testing potential adaptation strategies in the near future.     

Identifying climate change refugia for South American biodiversity

Refugia-based conservation offers long-term effectiveness and minimize uncertainty on strategies for climate change adaptation. We used distribution modelling to identify climate change refugia for 617 terrestrial mammals and to quantify the role of protected areas (PAs) in providing refugia across South America. To do so, we compared species potential distribution across different scenarios of climate change, highlighting those regions likely to retain suitable climatic conditions by year 2090, and explored the proportion of refugia inside PAs. Moist tropical forests in high-elevation areas with complex topography concentrated the highest local diversity of species refugia, although regionally important refugia centers occurred elsewhere. Andean–Amazon forests contained climate change refugia for more than half of the continental species’ pool and for up to 87 species locally (17 × 17 km² grid cell). The highlands of the southern Atlantic Forest also included megadiverse refugia for up to 76 species per cell. Almost half of the species that may find refugia in the Atlantic Forest will do so in a single region—the Serra do Mar and Serra do Espinhaço. Most of the refugia we identified, however, were not in PAs, which may contain <6% of the total area of climate change refugia, leaving 129–237 species with no refugia inside the territorial limits of PAs of any kind. Our results reveal a dismal scenario for the level of refugia protection in some of the most biodiverse regions of the world. Nonetheless, because refugia tend to be in high-elevation, topographically complex, and remote areas, with lower anthropogenic pressure, formally protecting them may require a comparatively modest investment.     

Evaluating and expanding the European Union's protected-area network toward potential post-2020 coverage targets

The Convention on Biological Diversity's (CBD) strategic plan will expire in 2020, but biodiversity loss is ongoing. Scientists call for more ambitious targets in the next agreement. The nature-needs-half movement, for example, has advocated conserving half of Earth to solve the biodiversity crisis, which has been translated to protecting 50% of each ecoregion. We evaluated current protection levels of ecoregions in the territory of one of the CBD's signatories, the European Union (EU). We also explored the possible enlargement of the Natura 2000 network to implement 30% or 50% ecoregion coverage in the EU member states’ protected area (PA) network. Based on the most recent land-use data, we examined whether ecoregions have enough natural area left to reach such high coverage targets. We used a spatially explicit mixed integer programing model to estimate the least-cost expansion of the PA network based on 3 scenarios that put different emphasis on total conservation cost, ecological representation of ecosystems, or emphasize an equal share of the burden among member states. To realize 30% and 50% ecoregion coverage, the EU would need to add 6.6% and 24.2%, respectively, of its terrestrial area to its PA network. For all 3 scenarios, the EU would need to designate most recommended new PAs in seminatural forests and other semi- or natural ecosystems. Because 15 ecoregions did not have enough natural area left to implement the ecoregion-coverage targets, some member states would also need to establish new PAs on productive land, allocating the largest share to arable land. Thirty percent ecoregion coverage was met by protecting remaining natural areas in all ecoregions except 3, where productive land would also need to be included. Our results support discussions of higher ecoregions protection targets for post-2020 biodiversity frameworks.     

Rewilding in the face of climate change

Expansion of the global protected-area network has been proposed as a strategy to address threats from accelerating climate change and species extinction. A key step in increasing the effectiveness of such expansion is understanding how novel threats to biodiversity from climate change alter concepts such as rewilding, which have underpinned many proposals for large interconnected reserves. We reviewed potential challenges that climate change poses to rewilding and found that the conservation value of large protected areas persists under climate change. Nevertheless, more attention should be given to protection of microrefugia, macrorefugia, complete environmental gradients, and areas that connect current and future suitable climates and to maintaining ecosystem processes and stabilizing feedbacks via conservation strategies that are resilient to uncertainty regarding climate trends. Because a major element of the threat from climate change stems from its novel geographic patterns, we examined, as an example, the implications for climate-adaptation planning of latitudinal, longitudinal (continental to maritime), and elevational gradients in climate-change exposure across the Yellowstone-to-Yukon region, the locus of an iconic conservation proposal initially designed to conserve wide-ranging carnivore species. In addition to a continued emphasis on conserving intact landscapes, restoration of degraded low-elevation areas within the region is needed to capture sites important for landscape-level climate resilience. Extreme climate exposure projected for boreal North America suggests the need for ambitious goals for expansion of the protected-area network there to include refugia created by topography and ecological features, such as peatlands, whose conservation can also reduce emissions from carbon stored in soil. Qualitative understanding of underlying reserve design rules and the geography of climate-change exposure can strengthen the outcomes of inclusive regional planning processes that identify specific sites for protection.     

Benefits of protected areas for nonbreeding waterbirds adjusting their distributions under climate warming

Climate warming is driving changes in species distributions and community composition. Many species have a so-called climatic debt, that is, shifts in range lag behind shifts in temperature isoclines. Inside protected areas (PAs), community changes in response to climate warming can be facilitated by greater colonization rates by warm-dwelling species, but also mitigated by lowering extirpation rates of cold-dwelling species. An evaluation of the relative importance of colonization-extirpation processes is important to inform conservation strategies that aim for both climate debt reduction and species conservation. We assessed the colonization-extirpation dynamics involved in community changes in response to climate inside and outside PAs. To do so, we used 25 years of occurrence data of nonbreeding waterbirds in the western Palearctic (97 species, 7071 sites, 39 countries, 1993–2017). We used a community temperature index (CTI) framework based on species thermal affinities to investigate species turnover induced by temperature increase. We determined whether thermal community adjustment was associated with colonization by warm-dwelling species or extirpation of cold-dwelling species by modeling change in standard deviation of the CTI (CTI_SD). Using linear mixed-effects models, we investigated whether communities in PAs had lower climatic debt and different patterns of community change than communities outside PAs. For CTI and CTI_SD combined, communities inside PAs had more species, higher colonization, lower extirpation, and lower climatic debt (16%) than communities outside PAs. Thus, our results suggest that PAs facilitate 2 independent processes that shape community dynamics and maintain biodiversity. The community adjustment was, however, not sufficiently fast to keep pace with the large temperature increases in the central and northeastern western Palearctic. Our results underline the potential of combining CTI and CTI_SD metrics to improve understanding of the colonization-extirpation patterns driven by climate warming.     

Boosting freshwater fish conservation with high-resolution distribution mapping across a large territory

The lack of high-resolution distribution maps for freshwater species across large extents fundamentally challenges biodiversity conservation worldwide. We devised a simple framework to delineate the distributions of freshwater fishes in a high-resolution drainage map based on stacked species distribution models and expert information. We applied this framework to the entire Chinese freshwater fish fauna (>1600 species) to examine high-resolution biodiversity patterns and reveal potential conflicts between freshwater biodiversity and anthropogenic disturbances. The correlations between spatial patterns of biodiversity facets (species richness, endemicity, and phylogenetic diversity) were all significant (r = 0.43–0.98, p < 0.001). Areas with high values of different biodiversity facets overlapped with anthropogenic disturbances. Existing protected areas (PAs), covering 22% of China's territory, protected 25–29% of fish habitats, 16–23% of species, and 30–31% of priority conservation areas. Moreover, 6–21% of the species were completely unprotected. These results suggest the need for extending the network of PAs to ensure the conservation of China's freshwater fishes and the goods and services they provide. Specifically, middle to low reaches of large rivers and their associated lakes from northeast to southwest China hosted the most diverse species assemblages and thus should be the target of future expansions of the network of PAs. More generally, our framework, which can be used to draw high-resolution freshwater biodiversity maps combining species occurrence data and expert knowledge on species distribution, provides an efficient way to design PAs regardless of the ecosystem, taxonomic group, or region considered.     

Scenarios of change in the realized climatic niche of mountain carnivores and ungulates

Mountains are among the natural systems most affected by climate change, and mountain mammals are considered particularly imperiled, given their high degree of specialization to narrow tolerance bands of environmental conditions. Climate change mitigation policies, such as the Paris Agreement, are essential to stem climate change impacts on natural systems. But how significant is the Paris Agreement to the survival of mountain mammals? We investigated how alternative emission scenarios may determine change in the realized climatic niche of mountain carnivores and ungulates in 2050. We based our predictions of future change in species niches based on how species have responded to past environmental changes, focusing on the probabilities of niche shrink and niche stability. We found that achieving the Paris Agreement's commitments would substantially reduce climate instability for mountain species. Specifically, limiting global warming to below 1.5°C would reduce the probability of niche shrinkage by 4% compared with a high-emission scenario. Globally, carnivores showed greater niche shrinkage than ungulates, whereas ungulates were more likely to shift their niches (i.e., face a level of climate change that allows adaptation). Twenty-three species threatened by climate change according to the IUCN Red List had greater niche contraction than other species we analyzed (3% higher on average). We therefore argue that climate mitigation policies must be coupled with rapid species-specific conservation intervention and sustainable land-use policies to avoid high risk of loss of already vulnerable species.     

Prospects for stakeholder coordination by protected‐area managers in Europe

Growing resource demands by humans, invasive species, natural hazards, and a changing climate have created broad‐scale impacts and the need for broader‐extent conservation activities that span ownerships and even political borders. Implementing regional‐scale conservation brings great challenges, and learning how to overcome these challenges is essential for maintaining biodiversity (i.e., richness and evenness of biological communities) and ecosystem functions and services across scales and borders in the face of system change. We administered an online survey to examine factors potentially driving perspectives of protected‐area (PA) managers regarding coordination with neighboring PAs and other stakeholders (i.e., stakeholder coordination) for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services during the next decade within diverse regions across Europe. Although >70% (n = 58) of responding PA managers indicated that climate change and invasive species are relevant for their PAs, they gave <50% probability that these threats could be mitigated through stakeholder coordination. They thought there was a >60% probability (n = 85) that stakeholder coordination would take place with the aim to improve conservation outcomes. Consistent with the foundation on which many European PAs were established, managers viewed maintaining or enhancing biodiversity as the most important (>70%; n = 61) expected benefit. Other benefits included maintaining or enhancing human resources and environmental education (range of Bayesian credibility intervals [CIs] 57–93%). They thought the main barriers to stakeholder coordination were the lack of human and economic resources (CI 59–67% chance of hindering; n = 64) followed by communication and interstakeholder differences in political structures and laws (CI 51–64% probability of hindering). European policies and strategies that address these hindering factors could be particularly effective means of enabling implementation of green infrastructure networks in which PAs are the nodes.     

Climate suitability as a predictor of conservation translocation failure

The continuing decline and loss of biodiversity has caused an increase in the use of interventionist conservation tools, such as translocation. However, many translocation attempts fail to establish viable populations, with poor release site selection often flagged as an inhibitor of success. We used species distribution models (SDMs) to predict the climate suitability of 102 release sites for amphibians, reptiles, and terrestrial insects and compared suitability predictions between successful and failed attempts. We then quantified the importance of climate suitability relative to 5 other variables frequently considered in the literature as important determinants of translocation success: number of release years, number of individuals released, life stage released, origin of the source population, and position of the release site relative to the species’ range. Probability of translocation success increased as predicted climate suitability increased and this effect was the strongest among the variables we considered, accounting for 48.3% of the variation in translocation outcome. These findings should encourage greater consideration of climate suitability when selecting release sites for conservation translocations and we advocate the use of SDMs as an effective way to do this.     

Value of protected areas to avian persistence across 20 years of climate and land-use change

Establishing protected areas, where human activities and land cover changes are restricted, is among the most widely used strategies for biodiversity conservation. This practice is based on the assumption that protected areas buffer species from processes that drive extinction. However, protected areas can maintain biodiversity in the face of climate change and subsequent shifts in distributions have been questioned. We evaluated the degree to which protected areas influenced colonization and extinction patterns of 97 avian species over 20 years in the northeastern United States. We fitted single-visit dynamic occupancy models to data from Breeding Bird Atlases to quantify the magnitude of the effect of drivers of local colonization and extinction (e.g., climate, land cover, and amount of protected area) in heterogeneous landscapes that varied in the amount of area under protection. Colonization and extinction probabilities improved as the amount of protected area increased, but these effects were conditional on landscape context and species characteristics. In this forest-dominated region, benefits of additional land protection were greatest when both forest cover in a grid square and amount of protected area in neighboring grid squares were low. Effects did not vary with species’ migratory habit or conservation status. Increasing the amounts of land protection benefitted the range margins species but not the core range species. The greatest improvements in colonization and extinction rates accrued for forest birds relative to open-habitat or generalist species. Overall, protected areas stemmed extinction more than they promoted colonization. Our results indicate that land protection remains a viable conservation strategy despite changing habitat and climate, as protected areas both reduce the risk of local extinction and facilitate movement into new areas. Our findings suggest conservation in the face of climate change favors creation of new protected areas over enlarging existing ones as the optimal strategy to reduce extinction and provide stepping stones for the greatest number of species.     

Rapid assessment of management options for promoting stock rebuilding in data-poor species under climate change

The development of species recovery plans requires considering likely outcomes of different management interventions, but the complicating effects of climate change are rarely evaluated. We examined how qualitative network models (QNMs) can be deployed to support decision making when data, time, and funding limitations restrict use of more demanding quantitative methods. We used QNMs to evaluate management interventions intended to promote the rebuilding of a collapsed stock of blue king crab (Paralithodes platypus) (BKC) around the Pribilof Islands (eastern Bering Sea) to determine how their potential efficacy may change under climate change. Based on stakeholder input and a literature review, we constructed a QNM that described the life cycle of BKC, key ecological interactions, potential climate-change impacts, relative interaction strengths, and uncertainty in terms of interaction strengths and link presence. We performed sensitivity analyses to identify key sources of prediction uncertainty. Under a scenario of no climate change, predicted increases in BKC were reliable only when stock enhancement was implemented in a BKC hatchery-program scenario. However, when climate change was accounted for, the intervention could not counteract its adverse impacts, which had an overall negative effect on BKC. The remaining management scenarios related to changes in fishing effort on BKC predators. For those scenarios, BKC outcomes were unreliable, but climate change further decreased the probability of observing recovery. Including information on relative interaction strengths increased the likelihood of predicting positive outcomes for BKC approximately 5–50% under the management scenarios. The largest gains in prediction precision will be made by reducing uncertainty associated with ecological interactions between adult BKC and red king crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus). Qualitative network models are useful options when data are limited, but they remain underutilized in conservation.     

An economic evaluation framework for land-use-based conservation policy instruments in a changing climate

Climate change is a key threat to biodiversity. To conserve species under climate change, ecologists and conservation scientists suggest 2 main conservation strategies regarding land use: supporting species’ range shifts to enable it to follow its climatic requirements by creating migration pathways, such as corridors and stepping stones, and conserving climate refugia (i.e., existing habitat areas that are somewhat buffered from climate change). The policy instruments that could be used to implement these conservation strategies have yet to be evaluated comprehensively from an economic perspective. The economic analyses of environmental policy instruments are often based on ecological effectiveness and cost-effectiveness criteria. We adapted these general criteria to evaluate policy instruments for species’ conservation under climate change and applied them to a conceptual analysis of land purchases, offsets, and conservation payments. Depending on whether the strategy supporting species’ range shifts or conserving climate refugia is selected, the evaluation of the policy instruments differed substantially. For example, to ensure ecological effectiveness, habitat persistence over time was especially important for climate refugia and was best achieved by a land-purchase policy instrument. In contrast, for the strategy supporting range shifts to be ecologically effective, a high degree of flexibility in the location of conserved sites was required to ensure that new habitat sites can be created in the species’ new range. Offset programs were best suited for that because the location of conservation sites can be chosen comparatively freely and may also be adapted over time.     

Importance of species translocations under rapid climate change

Species that cannot adapt or keep pace with a changing climate are likely to need human intervention to shift to more suitable climates. While hundreds of articles mention using translocation as a climate-change adaptation tool, in practice, assisted migration as a conservation action remains rare, especially for animals. This is likely due to concern over introducing species to places where they may become invasive. However, there are other barriers to consider, such as time-frame mismatch, sociopolitical, knowledge and uncertainty barriers to conservationists adopting assisted migration as a go-to strategy. We recommend the following to advance assisted migration as a conservation tool: attempt assisted migrations at small scales, translocate species with little invasion risk, adopt robust monitoring protocols that trigger an active response, and promote political and public support.     

Global protected-area coverage and human pressure on tidal flats

Tidal flats are a globally distributed coastal ecosystem important for supporting biodiversity and ecosystem services. Local to continental-scale studies have documented rapid loss of tidal habitat driven by human impacts, but assessments of progress in their conservation are lacking. With an internally consistent estimate of distribution and change, based on Landsat satellite imagery, now available for the world's tidal flats, we examined tidal flat representation in protected areas (PAs) and human pressure on tidal flats. We determined tidal flat representation and its net change in PAs by spatially overlaying tidal flat maps with the World Database of Protected Areas. Similarly, we overlaid the most recent distribution map of tidal flats (2014–2016) with the human modification map (HM_c) (range from 0, no human pressure, to 1, very high human pressure) to estimate the human pressure exerted on this ecosystem. Sixty-eight percent of the current extent of tidal flats is subject to moderate to very high human pressure (HM_c > 0.1), but 31% of tidal flat extent occurred in PAs, far exceeding PA coverage of the marine (6%) and terrestrial (13%) realms. Net change of tidal flat extent inside PAs was similar to tidal flat net change outside PAs from 1999 to 2016. Substantial shortfalls in protection of tidal flats occurred across Asia, where large intertidal extents coincided with high to very high human pressure (HM_c > 0.4–1.0) and net tidal flat losses up to 86.4 km² (95% CI 83.9–89.0) occurred inside individual PAs in the study period. Taken together, our results show substantial progress in PA designation for tidal flats globally, but that PA status alone does not prevent all habitat loss. Safeguarding the world's tidal flats will thus require deeper understanding of the factors that govern their dynamics and effective policy that promotes holistic coastal and catchment management strategies.     

Combined effects of land use and hunting on distributions of tropical mammals

Land use and hunting are 2 major pressures on biodiversity in the tropics. Yet, their combined impacts have not been systematically quantified at a large scale. We estimated the effects of both pressures on the distributions of 1884 tropical mammal species by integrating species’ range maps, detailed land-use maps (1992 and 2015), species-specific habitat preference data, and a hunting pressure model. We further identified areas where the combined impacts were greatest (hotspots) and least (coolspots) to determine priority areas for mitigation or prevention of the pressures. Land use was the main driver of reduced distribution of all mammal species considered. Yet, hunting pressure caused additional reductions in large-bodied species’ distributions. Together, land use and hunting reduced distributions of species by 41% (SD 30) on average (year 2015). Overlap between impacts was only 2% on average. Land use contributed more to the loss of distribution (39% on average) than hunting (4% on average). However, hunting reduced the distribution of large mammals by 29% on average; hence, large mammals lost a disproportional amount of area due to the combination of both pressures. Gran Chaco, the Atlantic Forest, and Thailand had high levels of impact across the species (hotspots of area loss). In contrast, the Amazon and Congo Basins, the Guianas, and Borneo had relatively low levels of impact (coolspots of area loss). Overall, hunting pressure and human land use increased from 1992 to 2015 and corresponding losses in distribution increased from 38% to 41% on average across the species. To effectively protect tropical mammals, conservation policies should address both pressures simultaneously because their effects are highly complementary. Our spatially detailed and species-specific results may support future national and global conservation agendas, including the design of post-2020 protected area targets and strategies.     

A new method for broad-scale modeling and projection of plant assemblages under climatic,biotic, and environmental cofiltering

There is increasing interestin broad-scale analysis, modeling, and prediction of the distribution and composition of plant species assemblages under climatic, environmental, and biotic change, particularly for conservation purposes. We devised a method to reliably predict the impact of climate change on large assemblages of plant communities, while also considering competing biotic and environmental factors. To this purpose, we first used multilabel algorithms in order to convert the task of explaining a large assemblage of plant communities into a classification framework able to capture with high cross-validated accuracy the pattern of species distributions under a composite set of biotic and abiotic factors. We applied our model to a large set of plant communities in the Swiss Alps. Our model explained presences and absences of 175 plant species in 608 plots with >87% cross-validated accuracy, predicted decreases in α, β, and γ diversity by 2040 under both moderate and extreme climate scenarios, and identified likely advantaged and disadvantaged plant species under climate change. Multilabel variable selection revealed the overriding importance of topography, soils, and temperature extremes (rather than averages) in determining the distribution of plant species in the study area and their response to climate change. Our method addressed a number of challenging research problems, such as scaling to large numbers of species, considering species relationships and rarity, and addressing an overwhelming proportion of absences in presence–absence matrices. By handling hundreds to thousands of plants and plots simultaneously over large areas, our method can inform broad-scale conservation of plant species under climate change because it allows species that require urgent conservation action (assisted migration, seed conservation, and ex situ conservation) to be detected and prioritized. Our method also increases the practicality of assisted colonization of plant species by helping to prevent ill-advised introduction of plant species with limited future survival probability.     

Use of historical and contemporary distribution of mammals in China to inform conservation

A systematic understanding of dynamic animal extinction trajectories for different regions in a nation like China is critically important to developing practical conservation strategies. We explored historical and contemporary changes in terrestrial mammalian diversity to determine how diversity in each of the 5 regions in China has changed over time and to examine the conservation potential of these regions. We used records from databases on Pleistocene mammalian fossils and historical distribution records (1175–2020) for Primates (as a case study) to reconstruct evolutionary and historical distribution trajectories of the 11 orders of terrestrial mammals and to predict their prospective survival based on the national conservation strategy applied. The results indicated that since the Pleistocene, 4–5 mammalian orders have been lost in the northeast, 3 in central China, 2 along the coast, and 1 in the northwest. In the southwest, all 11 orders were maintained. Contemporarily, the coast and southwest had the highest and second-highest species densities. The southwest region and southeastern sections of the northwest region were the most historically and contemporarily diverse areas, which suggests that they should be the first priority for protected area (PA) designation. The central and coastal areas should be secondarily prioritized. In these 2 regions, conservation should focus on human coexistence with nature. Less attention should be paid to the PA in the northeast and western northwest because in these areas ecosystems are depauperate and the climate is harsh. Conservation in these areas should focus principally on avoiding further human encroachment on natural areas. Article impact statement: Historical and contemporary patterns of extinction can be a basis for mammalian conservation strategies.     

Defining the balance point between conservation and development

In the face of the current global ecological crisis and the threats it poses to human survival and security, the fundamental solution is to resolve the deep contradiction between conservation and economic development. We considered the 3 key and basic questions of why to protect, how much to protect, and where to protect natural areas. Human survival depends on functioning ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide. In this regard, conserving core biodiversity conservation priority areas (BCPAs) can provide maximum conservation benefit. The goals of protected area (PA) systems globally and nationally must be clearly defined so as to sustain the survival and development of people and to coordinate and balance other objectives with this goal at the center. There is an urgent need to study, calculate, and define the extent of the natural world to ensure the well-being of people. We call this area over which natural areas of land and sea extend across the world or a country nature proportion (N%). Especially, a minimum area that ensures human survival should be protected, and we suggest that this area should cover core BCPAs so that it can achieve the maximum conservation benefit. These recommendations could be applied at global or national levels. The Chinese government proposes “developing a protected-area system composed mainly of national parks,” and it has unified the administration of PAs into a central management authority. At this key time in the reform of the PA system, should this proposal be adopted, conservation will garner the greatest social consensus and support, and planning at the national level for BCPA coverage will be improved. We believe these recommendations are critical for China and other countries and extremely important for the world because they will pave the way toward a balance between nature conservation and human development as the projected human population reaches 10 billion by 2050.