Landscape-scale benefits of protected areas for tropical biodiversity

Jedediah F Brodie; Jayasilan Mohd-Azlan; Cheng Chen; Oliver R. Wearn; Mairin C.M. Deith; James G. C.  Ball; Eleanor M.  Slade; David Burslem; Shu Woan Teoh; Peter J.  Williams; An Nguyen; Jonathan H.  Moore; Scott J Goetz; Patrick Burns; Patrick Jantz; Christopher R. Hakkenberg; Zaneta M. Kaszta; Sam Cushman; David A. Coomes; Olga E. Helmy; Glen Reynolds; Jon Paul Rodríguez; Walter Jetz; Matthew Scott Luskin

doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06410-z

Landscape-scale benefits of protected areas for tropical biodiversity

Jedediah F Brodie^* (Corresponding Author), Jayasilan Mohd-Azlan, Cheng Chen, Oliver R. Wearn, Mairin C.M. Deith, James G. C. Ball, Eleanor M. Slade, David Burslem, Shu Woan Teoh, Peter J. Williams, An Nguyen, Jonathan H. Moore, Scott J Goetz, Patrick Burns, Patrick Jantz, Christopher R. Hakkenberg, Zaneta M. Kaszta, Sam Cushman, David A. Coomes, Olga E. HelmyGlen Reynolds, Jon Paul Rodríguez, Walter Jetz, Matthew Scott Luskin

^*Corresponding author for this work

Aberdeen Centre For Environmental Sustainability

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

65 Citations (Scopus)

20 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The United Nations recently agreed to major expansions of global protected areas (PAs) to slow biodiversity declines. But while reserves often reduce habitat loss, their efficacy at preserving animal diversity is unclear, as is their influence on biodiversity in surrounding unprotected areas. Unregulated hunting can empty PAs of larger animals, illegal tree felling can degrade habitat quality, and parks can simply displace disturbances such as logging and hunting to unprotected areas of the landscape (‘leakage’). Alternatively, well-functioning PAs could enhance animal diversity within reserves as well as in nearby unprotected sites (‘spillover’). Here we test if PAs across mega-diverse Southeast Asia contribute to vertebrate conservation inside and outside their boundaries. Reserves increased all facets of bird diversity. Large reserves also had substantially enhanced mammal diversity in the adjacent unprotected landscape. Rather than PAs generating leakage that deteriorated ecological conditions elsewhere, our results are consistent with PAs inducing spillover that benefits biodiversity in surrounding areas. These findings support the 2030 United Nations goals of achieving 30% PA coverage by demonstrating that protected areas are associated with higher vertebrate diversity both inside their boundaries and in the broader landscape.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	807-812
Number of pages	22
Journal	Nature
Volume	620
Issue number	7975
Early online date	23 Aug 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06410-z
Publication status	Published - 24 Aug 2023

Bibliographical note

We are indebted to numerous local communities, PA and government agency staff, research assistants, and other partners for supporting the field data collection. Research permissions were granted by appropriate forestry and conservation government departments in each country. Special thanks is given to the Sarawak State Government, Sarawak Forestry Corporation, Forest Department Sarawak, Sabah Biodiversity Centre, the Danum Valley Management Committee, the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), the Smithsonian Institute and the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) network, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, and Ronglarp Sukmasuang. Support was provided by the United Nations Development Programme, NASA grants NNL15AA03C and 80NSSC21K0189, National Geographic Society’s Committee for the Research and Exploration award #9384–13, the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DECRA #DE210101440, the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, the Darwin Initiative, Liebniz-IZW, and the Universities of Aberdeen, British Columbia, Montana, and Queensland.

Publisher Correction: Landscape-scale benefits of protected areas for tropical biodiversity (Nature, (2023), 620, 7975, (807-812), 10.1038/s41586-023-06410-z)
Jedediah F. Brodie, Jayasilan Mohd-Azlan, Cheng Chen, Oliver R. Wearn, Mairin C.M. Deith, James G.C. Ball, Eleanor M. Slade, David F.R.P. Burslem, Shu Woan Teoh, Peter J. Williams, An Nguyen, Jonathan H. Moore, Scott J. Goetz, Patrick Burns, Patrick Jantz, Christopher R. Hakkenberg, Zaneta M. Kaszta, Sam Cushman, David Coomes, Olga E. Helmy, 2024. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-07007-2

Data Availability Statement

Data used in the mixed-effects modeling analysis are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.22527298.v1. Rasters (1-km resolution) for the study area for the GEDI-derived forest structural covariates and estimated site accessibility are available at https://rcdata.nau.edu/geode_data/SEA_vertebrate_diversity_rasters/.

CODE AVAILABILITY
Analysis codes (in the R programming language) are available at doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7796347.

Funding

We are indebted to numerous local communities, PA and government agency staff, research assistants and other partners for supporting the field data collection. Research permissions were granted by appropriate forestry and conservation government departments in each country. Special thanks are given to the Sarawak State Government, Sarawak Forestry Corporation, Forest Department Sarawak, Sabah Biodiversity Centre, the Danum Valley Management Committee, the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), the Smithsonian Institute and the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) network, S. Bunyavejchewin and R. Sukmasuang. Support was provided by the United Nations Development Programme, NASA grants NNL15AA03C and 80NSSC21K0189, the National Geographic Society’s Committee for the Research and Exploration award #9384–13, the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DECRA #DE210101440, the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, the Darwin Initiative, Liebniz-IZW, and the Universities of Aberdeen, British Columbia, Montana and Queensland. We are indebted to numerous local communities, PA and government agency staff, research assistants and other partners for supporting the field data collection. Research permissions were granted by appropriate forestry and conservation government departments in each country. Special thanks are given to the Sarawak State Government, Sarawak Forestry Corporation, Forest Department Sarawak, Sabah Biodiversity Centre, the Danum Valley Management Committee, the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), the Smithsonian Institute and the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) network, S. Bunyavejchewin and R. Sukmasuang. Support was provided by the United Nations Development Programme, NASA grants NNL15AA03C and 80NSSC21K0189, the National Geographic Society’s Committee for the Research and Exploration award #9384–13, the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DECRA #DE210101440, the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, the Darwin Initiative, Liebniz-IZW, and the Universities of Aberdeen, British Columbia, Montana and Queensland.

Keywords

Animals
Biodiversity
Conservation of Natural Resources/legislation & jurisprudence
Forestry/legislation & jurisprudence
Goals
Mammals
Tropical Climate
United Nations

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Brodie, J. F., Mohd-Azlan, J., Chen, C., Wearn, O. R., Deith, M. C. M., Ball, J. G. C., Slade, E. M., Burslem, D., Teoh, S. W., Williams, P. J., Nguyen, A., Moore, J. H., Goetz, S. J., Burns, P., Jantz, P., Hakkenberg, C. R., Kaszta, Z. M., Cushman, S., Coomes, D. A., ... Luskin, M. S. (2023). Landscape-scale benefits of protected areas for tropical biodiversity. Nature, 620(7975), 807-812. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06410-z

Brodie, JF, Mohd-Azlan, J, Chen, C, Wearn, OR, Deith, MCM, Ball, JGC, Slade, EM, Burslem, D, Teoh, SW, Williams, PJ, Nguyen, A, Moore, JH, Goetz, SJ, Burns, P, Jantz, P, Hakkenberg, CR, Kaszta, ZM, Cushman, S, Coomes, DA, Helmy, OE, Reynolds, G, Rodríguez, JP, Jetz, W & Luskin, MS 2023, 'Landscape-scale benefits of protected areas for tropical biodiversity', Nature, vol. 620, no. 7975, pp. 807-812. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06410-z

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abstract = "The United Nations recently agreed to major expansions of global protected areas (PAs) to slow biodiversity declines. But while reserves often reduce habitat loss, their efficacy at preserving animal diversity is unclear, as is their influence on biodiversity in surrounding unprotected areas. Unregulated hunting can empty PAs of larger animals, illegal tree felling can degrade habitat quality, and parks can simply displace disturbances such as logging and hunting to unprotected areas of the landscape ({\textquoteleft}leakage{\textquoteright}). Alternatively, well-functioning PAs could enhance animal diversity within reserves as well as in nearby unprotected sites ({\textquoteleft}spillover{\textquoteright}). Here we test if PAs across mega-diverse Southeast Asia contribute to vertebrate conservation inside and outside their boundaries. Reserves increased all facets of bird diversity. Large reserves also had substantially enhanced mammal diversity in the adjacent unprotected landscape. Rather than PAs generating leakage that deteriorated ecological conditions elsewhere, our results are consistent with PAs inducing spillover that benefits biodiversity in surrounding areas. These findings support the 2030 United Nations goals of achieving 30% PA coverage by demonstrating that protected areas are associated with higher vertebrate diversity both inside their boundaries and in the broader landscape. ",

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note = " We are indebted to numerous local communities, PA and government agency staff, research assistants, and other partners for supporting the field data collection. Research permissions were granted by appropriate forestry and conservation government departments in each country. Special thanks is given to the Sarawak State Government, Sarawak Forestry Corporation, Forest Department Sarawak, Sabah Biodiversity Centre, the Danum Valley Management Committee, the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM), the Smithsonian Institute and the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM) network, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, and Ronglarp Sukmasuang. Support was provided by the United Nations Development Programme, NASA grants NNL15AA03C and 80NSSC21K0189, National Geographic Society{\textquoteright}s Committee for the Research and Exploration award #9384–13, the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DECRA #DE210101440, the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, the Darwin Initiative, Liebniz-IZW, and the Universities of Aberdeen, British Columbia, Montana, and Queensland. Publisher Correction: Landscape-scale benefits of protected areas for tropical biodiversity (Nature, (2023), 620, 7975, (807-812), 10.1038/s41586-023-06410-z) Jedediah F. Brodie, Jayasilan Mohd-Azlan, Cheng Chen, Oliver R. Wearn, Mairin C.M. Deith, James G.C. Ball, Eleanor M. Slade, David F.R.P. Burslem, Shu Woan Teoh, Peter J. Williams, An Nguyen, Jonathan H. Moore, Scott J. Goetz, Patrick Burns, Patrick Jantz, Christopher R. Hakkenberg, Zaneta M. Kaszta, Sam Cushman, David Coomes, Olga E. Helmy, 2024. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-07007-2 ",

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Landscape-scale benefits of protected areas for tropical biodiversity

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Data Availability Statement

Funding

Keywords

Access to Document

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