Abstract
Climate and land use changes are major threats to biodiversity. To preserve biodiversity, networks of protected areas have been established worldwide, like the Natura 2000 network across the European Union (EU). Currently, this reserve network consists of more than 26000 sites covering more than 17% of EU terrestrial territory. Its efficiency to mitigate the detrimental effects of land use and climate change remains an open research question. Here, we examined the potential current and future geographical ranges of four birds of prey under scenarios of both land use and climate changes. By using graph theory, we examined how the current Natura 2000 network will perform in regard to the conservation of these species. This approach determines the importance of a site in regard to the total network and its connectivity. We found that sites becoming unsuitable due to climate change are not a random sample of the network, but are less connected and contribute less to the overall connectivity than the average site and thus their loss does not disrupt the full network. Hence, the connectivity of the remaining network changed only slightly from present day conditions. Our findings highlight the need to establish species-specific management plans with flexible conservation strategies ensuring protection under potential future range expansions. Aquila pomarina is predicted to disappear from the southern part of its range and to become restricted to northeastern Europe. Gyps fulvus, Aquila chrysaetos, and Neophron percnopterus are predicted to locally lose some suitable sites; hence, some isolated small populations may become extinct. However, their geographical range and metapopulation structure will remain relatively unaffected throughout Europe. These species would benefit more from an improved habitat quality and management of the existing network of protected areas than from increased connectivity or assisted migration.
Highlights
Conservation networks have been established based on different targets and criteria [1] and represent static networks of a given dimension and a constant area
Land use changes and climate change are considered the basic threats to biodiversity [5,6,7], that could significantly reduce conservation efficiency of networks of protected areas [3], [8], [9] by altering their structure and properties [10], [11]
Range shifts due to climate and land use changes could cause species to move out of protected areas, while local extinction could alter the community composition within protected sites, suggesting that these two basic threats should be taken into consideration when setting conservation priorities [4], [12]
Summary
Conservation networks have been established based on different targets and criteria [1] and represent static networks of a given dimension and a constant area. The selection of eligible sites to be included in such networks is based on the current distributions of species, habitats and/or ecosystems Still such prioritization processes largely ignore reductions of favorable area for species persistence as a result of land conversion, habitat loss, fragmentation and climate change [2]. These limitations raise a critical question on whether existing networks are efficient in conserving biodiversity targets under land use and climate change, and whether these networks could safeguard coherence and resilience to these threats [3], [4]. Range shifts due to climate and land use changes could cause species to move out of protected areas, while local extinction could alter the community composition within protected sites, suggesting that these two basic threats should be taken into consideration when setting conservation priorities [4], [12]
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