Protected Areas (PAs) form a core component of efforts to conserve biodiversity, but are designated for a variety of reasons. We assessed the effectiveness of PAs in covering the ranges of 157 globally threatened terrestrial bird species in mainland Africa and Madagascar. To reduce commission errors, rather than using Extent of Occurrence (EOO) as a measure of distribution, we estimated the Extent of potentially Suitable Habitat (ESH) for each species within its EOO, using data on habitat preferences and land cover. On average, 14% of species' ESH fell within PAs, with negligible coverage of Critically Endangered species. By contrast, an average of 30% of species' ESH fell within Important Bird Areas (IBAs), a network of sites identified using globally standardized criteria as critical for bird conservation. IBAs that overlapped or fell within PAs were significantly less effective at covering the ESH of threatened birds than those falling outside the PA network, and for IBAs partly overlapping with PAs, coverage of threatened birds was significantly greater in the unprotected part. Expansion of the PA (and IBA) networks in parts of Madagascar, the Albertine Rift, Cameroon Highlands, Eastern Arc and eastern Kenya would benefit globally threatened bird species conservation.
Conservation actions need to be prioritised, often taking into account species' extinction risk.The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List provides an accepted objective framework for the assessment of extinction risk, but field data to apply the IUCN Red List criteria are often limited. Information collected through remote sensing can inform these assessments, and forests are perhaps the best-studied habitat type for use in this ap- This would increase the proportion of species of conservation concern by 32.8% for amphibians, 15.1% for birds and 24.7% for mammals. Central America, the Northern Andes, Madagascar, the Eastern Arc forests in Africa and the islands of South-East Asia are hotspots for these species. The analyses illustrate the utility of satellite imagery for global extinction risk assessment and measurement of progress towards international environmental agreement targets. We highlight areas for which subsequent analyses could be performed on satellite image data in order to improve our knowledge of extinction risk of species.
International legislation forms a cornerstone of conservation, yet its efficacy is rarely quantified. We assess whether species listed on Annex I of the European Union (EU) Birds Directive, for which EU Member States are obliged to implement special conservation measures, differ systematically in their shortterm (2001-2012) or long-term (1980-2012) population trends from those of non-Annex I species. In both periods, Annex I species had more positive trends than non-Annex I species, particularly in countries that joined the EU earlier.There were additional signatures of climate change and life history strategy in the trends of species in one or both periods. Within Annex I species, longdistance migrants fared significantly worse than other species, suggesting that enhanced protection on the breeding grounds alone may be insufficient for these species. We conclude that the EU's conservation legislation has had a demonstrably positive impact on target species, even during a period in which climate change has significantly affected populations.
There is an emerging consensus that protected areas are key in reducing adverse land-cover change, but their efficacy remains difficult to quantify. Many previous assessments of protected area effectiveness have compared changes between sets of protected and unprotected sites that differ systematically in other potentially confounding respects (e.g. altitude, accessibility), have considered only forest loss or changes at single sites, or have analysed changes derived from land-cover data of low spatial resolution. We assessed the effectiveness of protection in reducing land-cover change in Important Bird Areas (IBAs) across Africa using a dedicated visual interpretation of higher resolution satellite imagery. We compared rates of change in natural land-cover over a c. 20-year period from around 1990 at a large number of points across 45 protected IBAs to those from 48 unprotected IBAs. A matching algorithm was used to select sample points to control for potentially confounding differences between protected and unprotected IBAs. The rate of loss of natural land-cover at sample points within protected IBAs was just 42% of that at matched points in unprotected IBAs. Conversion was especially marked in forests, but protection reduced rates of forest loss by a similar relative amount. Rates of conversion increased from the centre to the edges of both protected and unprotected IBAs, but rates of loss in 20-km buffer zones surrounding protected IBAs and unprotected IBAs were similar, with no evidence of displacement of conversion from within protected areas to their immediate surrounds (leakage).
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