A Canada-wide macro assessment of protected area connectivity

Abstract

Protected areas have become increasingly important for preventing biodiversity declines. However, their effectiveness depends, in part, on how well they are connected with other viable habitats because maintaining and enhancing species movement is critical for population persistence. We used human footprint data to identify potential movement corridors (within maximum distances of 5 and 50 km) among Canadian protected areas. We then compared the degree of connectivity for government protected areas, private protected areas, Indigenous managed lands, and a control (randomly sampled lands). At a maximum distance of 5 km, compared to the control group, government protected areas had 5.6 times more connections, private protected areas had 5.1 times, and Indigenous managed lands (e.g., Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas) had 4.8 times. At a maximum distance of 50 km, government and private protected areas had 2.6 and 1.4 times the number of connections than the control group, respectively, but Indigenous managed lands had fewer connections than the control. Among private protected areas, at both maximum distances, conservation agreements had approximately 1.3 times the number of connections than fee simple properties. Our results highlight differences in connectivity between protected area types and the disparity in connectivity between government protected areas and their non-governmental counterparts.