Abstract
Mediterranean-type ecosystems constitute one of the rarest terrestrial biomes and yet they are extraordinarily biodiverse. Home to over 250 million people, the five regions where these ecosystems are found have climate and coastal conditions that make them highly desirable human habitats. The current conservation landscape does not reflect the mediterranean biome's rarity and its importance for plant endemism. Habitat conversion will clearly outpace expansion of formal protected-area networks, and conservationists must augment this traditional strategy with new approaches to sustain the mediterranean biota. Using regional scale datasets, we determine the area of land in each of the five regions that is protected, converted (e.g., to urban or industrial), impacted (e.g., intensive, cultivated agriculture), or lands that we consider to have conservation potential. The latter are natural and semi-natural lands that are unprotected (e.g., private range lands) but sustain numerous native species and associated habitats. Chile has the greatest proportion of its land (75%) in this category and California-Mexico the least (48%). To illustrate the potential for achieving mediterranean biodiversity conservation on these lands, we use species-area curves generated from ecoregion scale data on native plant species richness and vertebrate species richness. For example, if biodiversity could be sustained on even 25% of existing unprotected, natural and semi-natural lands, we estimate that the habitat of more than 6,000 species could be represented. This analysis suggests that if unprotected natural and semi-natural lands are managed in a manner that allows for persistence of native species, we can realize significant additional biodiversity gains. Lasting biodiversity protection at the scale needed requires unprecedented collaboration among stakeholders to promote conservation both inside and outside of traditional protected areas, including on lands where people live and work.
Highlights
Geographic regions with a mediterranean climate form one of the rarest of the Earth’s thirteen terrestrial biomes, covering a mere 2% of the Earth’s land surface [1,2]
What the mediterranean biome lacks in size is compensated by in biodiversity
The mediterranean biome is widely recognized as a global conservation priority [5,6,7], only 4.3% of the biome is within formally protected reserves designated for biodiversity protection (IUCN classes I-IV) [8], which is less than half of the accepted global protection goal for ecological systems [9]
Summary
Geographic regions with a mediterranean climate form one of the rarest of the Earth’s thirteen terrestrial biomes, covering a mere 2% of the Earth’s land surface [1,2]. What the mediterranean biome lacks in size is compensated by in biodiversity. Over 20% of Earth’s known vascular plant taxa are found in this biome [2,3], many of which are exceedingly rare and localized endemics [3]. Mediterranean regions, with their mild climate of cool wet winters and warm dry summers, are home to millions of people and many of the world’s major metropolitan areas, e.g., Rome (Italy), Santiago (Chile), Cape Town (South Africa), Los Angeles (USA), and Perth (Australia). Protected areas that do exist are disproportionally concentrated in ‘left-over land’, ill-suited to economic uses, such as areas of high elevation and steep slopes in the Cape Region of South Africa [10]
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