Abstract
Mammalian carnivores have suffered the biggest range contraction among all biodiversity and are particularly vulnerable to habitat loss and fragmentation. Therefore, we identified priority areas for the conservation of mammalian carnivores, while accounting for species-specific requirements for connectivity and expected agricultural and urban expansion. While prioritizing for carnivores only, we were also able to test their effectiveness as surrogates for 23,110 species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles and 867 terrestrial ecoregions. We then assessed the risks to carnivore conservation within each country that makes a contribution to global carnivore conservation. We found that land use change will potentially lead to important range losses, particularly amongst already threatened carnivore species. In addition, the 17% of land targeted for protection under the Aichi Target 11 was found to be inadequate to conserve carnivores under expected land use change. Our results also highlight that land use change will decrease the effectiveness of carnivores to protect other threatened species, especially threatened amphibians. In addition, the risk of human-carnivore conflict is potentially high in countries where we identified spatial priorities for their conservation. As meeting the global biodiversity target will be inadequate for carnivore protection, innovative interventions are needed to conserve carnivores outside protected areas to compliment any proposed expansion of the protected area network.
Highlights
Traits, such as large body sizes, large area requirements, low densities, and slow population growth rates, make mammalian carnivores vulnerable to habitat loss and fragmentation[15]
Our analysis considered a total of 317 placental and marsupial carnivore species, by using updated species range maps for the Felidae and species range maps provided by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)[5]
We (i) evaluated the representation of all carnivore species within the global protected area network; (ii) assessed what the carnivore species representation would be if the 17% land target for global protected area expansion was allocated to carnivore conservation, both currently and under future land use change scenarios; (iii) tested the effectiveness of carnivores as umbrella species for 23,110 species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles and 867 terrestrial ecoregions, both currently and under future land use change scenarios; and (iv) assessed which social, economic and political factors could potentially constrain carnivore conservation in countries that were identified as priorities for carnivore conservation
Summary
Traits, such as large body sizes, large area requirements, low densities, and slow population growth rates, make mammalian carnivores vulnerable to habitat loss and fragmentation[15]. It is crucial to assess which social, economic and political factors could potentially constrain carnivore conservation in priority areas for conservation action These are the challenges we address here. We (i) evaluated the representation of all carnivore species within the global protected area network; (ii) assessed what the carnivore species representation would be if the 17% land target for global protected area expansion was allocated to carnivore conservation, both currently and under future land use change scenarios; (iii) tested the effectiveness of carnivores as umbrella species for 23,110 species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles and 867 terrestrial ecoregions, both currently and under future land use change scenarios; and (iv) assessed which social, economic and political factors could potentially constrain carnivore conservation in countries that were identified as priorities for carnivore conservation
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