A quantitative analysis on the effects of critical factors limiting the effectiveness of species conservation in future time

Abstract

The effectiveness of conservation plans depends on environmental, ecological, and socioeconomic factors. Global change makes conservation decisions even more challenging. Among others, the components of most concern in modern‐day conservation assessments are as follows: the magnitude of climate and land‐use changes; species dispersal abilities; competition with harmful socioeconomic activities for land use; the number of threatened species to consider; and, relatedly, the available budget to act. Here, we provide a unified framework that quantifies the relative effects of those factors on conservation. We conducted an area‐scheduling work plan in order to identify sets of areas along time in which the persistence expectancies of species are optimized. The approach was illustrated using data of potential distribution of ten nonvolant mammal species in Iberia Peninsula from current time up to 2080. Analyses were conducted considering possible setups among the factors that are likely to critically impact conservation success: three climate/land‐use scenarios; four species’ dispersal kernel curves; six land‐use layer types; and two planning designs, in which assessments were made independently for each species, or joining all species in a single plan. We identified areas for an array of investments levels capable to circumvent the spatial conflicts with socioeconomic activities. The effect of each factor on the estimated species persistence scores was assessed using linear mixed models. Our results evidence that conservation success is highly reliant on the resources available to abate land‐use conflicts. Nonetheless, under the same investment levels, planning design and climate change were the factors that most shaped species persistence scores. The persistence of five species was especially affected by the sole effect of planning design and consequently, larger conservation investments may retard climatic debts. For three species, the negative effects of a changing climate and of multiple‐species planning designs added up, making these species especially at risk. Integrated assessments of the factors most likely to limit species persistence are pivotal to achieve effectiveness.

Revisiting the minimum set cover, the maximal coverage problems and a maximum benefit area selection problem to make climate‐change‐concerned conservation plans effective

“…That is, species may: (a) have insufficient suitable area available within the planning region and time horizon; (b) be faced with dispersal barriers that prevent reaching suitable areas; or (c) have limited dispersal rates, that is, lower than the rate of environmental change (Fortini & Dye, 2017). A previous study, which used minShortfall to compare the effects of climate, dispersal rates and budget (resulting from comparing single vs. multiple‐species plans) on the performance of CCCs, found that budget and climate were the most limiting factors to species target fulfilment (Alagador & Cerdeira, 2018). For only two species ( C. lupus and F sylvestris ), dispersal ability was also a significant factor affecting conservation success either in single or multiple‐species conservation plans.…”

“…Specifically, we considered that dispersal success (a) depends only on geographical distances between source and settlement areas; (b) does not depend on the suitability of both those areas and (c) does not change with time. Species dispersal parameterization and protection cost of each site in each time period (cost it ) follows data in Alagador and Cerdeira (2018; Figure 1b).…”

New Paradigms for Modern Biogeography Conservation

“…These expansions expand the risk of conservation goals to conflict with established socioeconomic activities. Because of this, trading off PA coverage, protection hardness (i.e., a gradient of accepted activities), and conservation targets define the cocktail that characterizes modern conservation plans (Alagador and Cerdeira 2018;Jones et al 2016). The identification of the areas that are likely to be suitable for several species in current and future time periods has been executed in two ways.…”

Accounting for uncertainty in assessing the impact of climate change on biodiversity hotspots in Spain

“…The second group includes species whose predicted trends are seriously affected by uncertainty, but for which a decrease in favourability is forecast by some of the models: Rana pyrenaica, Salamandra longirostris, Pterocles alchata, Tetrao urogallo, Arvicola sapidus, Galemys pyrenaicus, and Microtus cabrerae. For some of these species, we detected areas where the decrease in favourability was not affected by uncertainty: some squares at the southern limit of the Rana pyrenaica distribution; the core squares of the north-western populations of Tetrao urugallo, that is home to a large part of the genetic stock of populations at the southern limit of its global distribution, essential for the conservation of the genetic biodiversity of the species (Alda et al, 2013); the southern half of the Iberian peninsula, where the presence of Arvicola sapidus is scattered (Palomo et al, 2007); and the mid-western populations of Microtus cabrerae, for which climate was not the main driver of its distribution or possible decline (Alagador and Cerdeira, 2018). Anyway, for this group of species our results highlighted territories to monitor the populations and evaluate the possibility of applying conservation measures (Dawson et al, 2011).…”