Biodiversity Persistence in Highly Human-Modified Tropical Landscapes Depends on Ecological Restoration

Abstract

In human-modified tropical landscapes, biodiversity is threatened by a myriad of forces, including habitat loss and fragmentation, land degradation, overexploitation of forest resources, and biological invasions. Ecological restoration offers a promising way to enhance biodiversity persistence and the delivery of ecosystem services by: 1) establishing structural elements in the landscape to enhance connectivity, 2) providing additional forest cover, 3) restoring degraded forest remnants through protection from human-mediated disturbances and reestablishment of successional trajectory, and 4) supporting sustainable socio-economic development in marginalized rural communities, where the lack of job opportunities drives deforestation, forest degradation, and overexploitation. Due to biodiversity requirements, however, this potential will only be realized if restoration is carried out on very large spatial scales. Although conservation biologists have historically doubted the potential of ecological restoration to reverse ecosystem degradation and mitigate species loss, we argue that conservation policies and programs should include restoration among the strategies adopted to mitigate extinction debts and support the creation of biodiversity friendly-landscapes. Otherwise, we will likely continue to describe a slow and irreversible loss of our biological heritage in isolated protected areas in human-modified tropical landscapes.