A global assessment of forest integrity within Key Biodiversity Areas

Abstract

Forest ecosystems cover one third of the terrestrial land surface, with those that are still functioning and largely intact being critically important for the conservation of threatened and endemic biodiversity. Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are sites contributing significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity; >16,000 KBAs have been identified to date, almost half of which are of importance to forest species, including one-fifth that are important for one or more globally threatened species. It is important to track changes in forest integrity within KBAs to determine which important areas are under the greatest threat (so as to identify the actions needed), and also to track the overall effectiveness of conservation interventions. We utilised the Forest Landscape Integrity Index (FLII), which has been mapped globally at a 300 m resolution, to measure trends in forest integrity across 6844 KBAs of importance for forest biodiversity. In total 54 % (3.9 million km2) of these KBAs was forested, of which 44 % (1.7 million km2) is considered still to be of high integrity. South America, Africa and Asia were regions with the largest areas of high integrity forest within KBAs, while Oceania and Australasia had proportionally the highest amount of high forest integrity within their KBAs. We found that forest integrity was proportionally higher in larger KBAs, KBAs with larger proportions of forest, KBAs located close to other forested KBAs, and in protected KBAs. Unprotected and partially protected high-integrity forested KBA areas (making up 26 % of the current forested KBA estate) are among the highest priorities for assessing required conservation actions, including restoration to increase connectivity and reduce fragmentation and edge effects, and/or efforts to expand protected areas or other effective area-based conservation measures' (OECMs).