A preliminary assessment of the contribution of nature reserves to biodiversity conservation in Great Britain

Hopkinson, Paul; Travis, Justin M. J.; Prendergast, John R.; Evans, Julianne; Gregory, Richard D.; Telfer, Mark G.; Williams, Paul H.

doi:10.1017/s1367943000001037

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Such studies however valuable are not appropriate for appraising the implementation of the network on a national or international level. Therefore, a landscape level approach to illustrate the current situation in N2K sites is essential (Hopkinson et al 2000;Iojȃ et al 2010;Mikkonen and Moilanen 2013;Popescu et al 2014). This paper uses the wolf as a case study in a large scale evaluation of the Greek N2K network.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Natura 2000 Network for Wolf Conservation: A Case-Study in Greece

Votsi

Zomeni

Pantis

2015

Environmental Management

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The wolf (Canis lupus) is used as a case study to rate Natura 2000 sites in Greece based on preferred wolf habitat characteristics and test whether the network is suitable for their conservation. Road density, agricultural area, site area, connectivity, food availability (i.e., presence of natural prey), and elevation in 237 sites are combined in a logistic regression model. The occurrence of the wolf's natural prey was the most prevalent factor determining wolf presence, followed by agricultural cover. Considering the current status of these features at N2K site level, most sites currently hosting wolves (85.7%) have good or excellent prospects for the long-term presence of the wolf. On the contrary, 11 sites which now have wolves are predicted to be ineffective in keeping them in the future due to the absence of wild ungulates and their high agricultural coverage. Four sites with no wolf presence currently have excellent prospects to host wolves in the future. Roadless sites are a priority for protection and retaining their current condition is strongly suggested. The proposed approach aims to detect gaps in protection for the wolf and identify priority sites in need of mitigation actions. It can also assist the assessment of conservation policies in Greece and elsewhere toward accomplishing set goals in protected areas. By focusing on wolf protection, we hope to increase agencies' attention to deal with conservation effectiveness, especially in cases like Greece, where a number of sites are insufficiently known and protected and management measures are not properly implemented.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Natura 2000 Network for Wolf Conservation: A Case-Study in Greece

Votsi

Zomeni

Pantis

2015

Environmental Management

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“…The purposes of protected areas are principally twofold: to capture a sample of biodiversity, with a particular focus on rare and threatened features (typically habitats or species), and to separate or buffer this sample from external pressures (Margules & Pressey, 2000). In consequence, many studies have sought to determine how well protected area systems sample the set of biodiversity features present in the appropriate regional or global pool, including biomes, vegetation types, species, and populations (Hopkinson et al , 2000; Pressey & Taffs, 2001; Scott et al , 2001; Jackson et al , 2004; Rodrigues et al , 2004b; Deguise & Kerr, 2006). In particular, much attention has been directed to the extent to which these systems represent features more efficiently than does a random choice of areas of similar number or overall extent (Araújo, 1999; Jackson et al , 2004) and the extent to which alternative configurations of areas or the addition of further areas could improve on the observed level of representation (Rodrigues et al , 2004a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Land use change and the dependence of national priority species on protected areas

Jackson¹,

Gaston

2008

Global Change Biology

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The establishment and maintenance of a system of protected areas is central to regional and global strategies for the conservation of biodiversity. The current global trend towards human population growth and widespread environmental degradation means that such areas are becoming increasingly isolated, fragmented habitat islands. In regions in which this process is well advanced, a high proportion of species are thus predicted to have become restricted to protected areas. Here, using uniquely detailed datasets for Britain, a region with close to the global level of percentage coverage by statutory protected areas, we determine the extent of restriction of species of conservation concern to these areas. On the basis of currently known distributions, more than a half of such species are highly dependent on protected areas for their continued persistence, occurring either entirely or largely within their bounds. Such coverage is of particular importance for those species with narrower distributions, and therefore, under the greatest threats, underlining the vital importance of adequately resourcing, maintaining, and developing protected areas to prevent these species from being lost.

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“…The approach is a heuristic method designed to maximize species’ representation in the resulting reserve network, based on the principle of complementarity of species composition (e.g. Peterson et al ., 2000; Williams et al ., 1996; Hopkinson et al ., 2000). The area with highest representation of species was selected as a first element in the system; eliminating those species from consideration, subsequent areas were selected based on those areas that were richest in representation of the remaining species.…”

Section: Study Area and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ad-hoc assembly of reserve systems has resulted in biased representation of natural features and increased costs of achieving representative reserve systems (Pressey, 1994 To provide a scientific basis for reserve networks, efficient new computational methods (site-selection algorithms) have been developed to identify sets of areas that maximize representation of species (Pressey et al ., 1997;Stokland, 1997;Prendergast et al ., 1999;Cabeza & Moilanen, 2001). These algorithms have focused on identifying (1) hotspots of richness (areas that individually have highest species richness) (2) hotspots of rarity (areas that individually are richest in rare species), and (3) complementary areas (multiple areas that in combination have the highest species richness) (Hopkinson et al ., 2000;Williams et al ., 1996), and provide a means of designing reserve networks with explicit criteria and goals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling spatial patterns of biodiversity for conservation prioritization in North‐eastern Mexico

Ortega-Huerta

Peterson

2004

Diversity and Distributions

128

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Relationships between spatial patterns of bird and mammal species richness in north‐eastern Mexico were analysed in relation to the location of three biosphere reserves (El Abra‐Tanchipa, El Cielo, and Sierra Gorda) and 13 priority areas recently identified for conservation. Ecological niches were modelled and potential distributions delimited for 285 bird and 114 mammal species using a genetic algorithm based on locality information from museum specimens and 15 selected environmental attributes. Potential distributions were transformed into hypothesized current distributions based on species–habitat associations as reflected in a recent land‐use map. Although species richness was lower when distributions were reduced from potential to current, spatial patterns of potential and current richness were similar. Heuristic, complementarity‐based prioritization procedures were used to identify combinations of areas and sites with maximal species representation: the biosphere reserves included 79% of birds and 74% of mammal species; eight priority areas provided an additional 11% of birds and 13% of mammals; the remaining 10% of birds and 13% of mammals were concentrated in new sites across the study area.

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A preliminary assessment of the contribution of nature reserves to biodiversity conservation in Great Britain

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Natura 2000 Network for Wolf Conservation: A Case-Study in Greece

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Natura 2000 Network for Wolf Conservation: A Case-Study in Greece

Land use change and the dependence of national priority species on protected areas

Modelling spatial patterns of biodiversity for conservation prioritization in North‐eastern Mexico

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