Animal invaders threaten protected areas worldwide

Abstract

Protected areas are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation. However, alien species invasion is an increasing threat to biodiversity, and the extent to which protected areas worldwide are resistant to incursions of alien species remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate establishment by 894 terrestrial alien animals from 11 taxonomic groups including vertebrates and invertebrates across 199,957 protected areas at the global scale. We find that <10% of protected areas are home to any of the alien animals, but there is at least one established population within 10-100 km of the boundaries of 89%-99% of protected areas, while >95% of protected areas are environmentally suitable for establishment. Higher alien richness is observed in IUCN category-II national parks supposedly with stricter protection, and in larger protected areas with higher human footprint and more recent designation. Our results demonstrate that protected areas provide important protection from biological invasions, but invasions may become an increasingly dominant problem in the near future.

Insights for protection of high species richness areas for the conservation of Mesoamerican endemic birds

“…This indicates that despite the increase in the extent of terrestrial PAs over the last decade (Jones et al, 2018;Watson, Dudley, Segan, & Hockings, 2014;Watson et al, 2011), PAs are generally not located in the most suitable or important sites to protect the endemic biota across region, leaving the overall conservation picture for birds in this region quite weak. This last scenario could be even more critical if we consider recent evidence that invasive species are present in PAs (Liu et al, 2020;Rico-Sánchez et al, 2020), which can directly and/or indirectly threaten the biota and ecosystem integrity. (Defourny et al, 2016;Hansen et al, 2013).…”

Biological invasions in World Heritage Sites: current status and a proposed monitoring and reporting framework

“…Natural and mixed WHS and other PAs face major and growing threats from biological invasions (Usher 1988;Foxcroft et al 2013Foxcroft et al , 2017Osipova et al 2017;Witt et al 2017;Liu et al 2020;Shackleton et al 2020) ( Fig. 1; Table 4).…”

Double trouble: the implications of climate change for biological invasions

“…Although the invasion risk faced by protected areas remains to be considered in many regions, an increasing number of studies have highlighted an anticipated rise in risk in marine, terrestrial and freshwater systems (e.g. Markovic et al 2014;Iacarella et al 2020;Liu et al 2020).…”