Local biodiversity is higher inside than outside terrestrial protected areas worldwide

Claudia L. Gray (), Samantha L. L. Hill (), Tim Newbold, Lawrence N. Hudson, Luca Börger, Sara Contu, Andrew J. Hoskins, Simon Ferrier, Andy Purvis and Jörn P. W. Scharlemann ()
Additional contact information
Claudia L. Gray: School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex
Samantha L. L. Hill: United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre
Tim Newbold: United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre
Lawrence N. Hudson: Natural History Museum
Luca Börger: College of Science, Swansea University, Singleton Park
Sara Contu: Natural History Museum
Andrew J. Hoskins: CSIRO Land and Water
Simon Ferrier: CSIRO Land and Water
Andy Purvis: Natural History Museum
Jörn P. W. Scharlemann: School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Protected areas are widely considered essential for biodiversity conservation. However, few global studies have demonstrated that protection benefits a broad range of species. Here, using a new global biodiversity database with unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage, we compare four biodiversity measures at sites sampled in multiple land uses inside and outside protected areas. Globally, species richness is 10.6% higher and abundance 14.5% higher in samples taken inside protected areas compared with samples taken outside, but neither rarefaction-based richness nor endemicity differ significantly. Importantly, we show that the positive effects of protection are mostly attributable to differences in land use between protected and unprotected sites. Nonetheless, even within some human-dominated land uses, species richness and abundance are higher in protected sites. Our results reinforce the global importance of protected areas but suggest that protection does not consistently benefit species with small ranges or increase the variety of ecological niches.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12306 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12306

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12306

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().