Sustainability Research Institute, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT Leeds, UK.
Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5131.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Jun 14;119(24):e2200118119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2200118119. Epub 2022 Jun 6.
Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of global conservation and central to international plans to minimize global extinctions. During the coming century, global ecosystem destruction and fragmentation associated with increased human population and economic activity could make the long-term survival of most terrestrial vertebrates even more dependent on PAs. However, the capacity of the current global PA network to sustain species for the long term is unknown. Here, we explore this question for all nonvolant terrestrial mammals for which we found sufficient data, ∼4,000 species. We first estimate the potential population size of each such mammal species in each PA and then use three different criteria to estimate if solely the current global network of PAs might be sufficient for their long-term survival. Our analyses suggest that current PAs may fail to provide robust protection for about half the species analyzed, including most species currently listed as threatened with extinction and a third of species not currently listed as threatened. Hundreds of mammal species appear to have no viable protected populations. Underprotected species were found across all body sizes, taxonomic groups, and geographic regions. Large-bodied mammals, endemic species, and those in high-biodiversity tropical regions were particularly poorly protected by existing PAs. As new international biodiversity targets are formulated, our results suggest that the global network of PAs must be greatly expanded and most importantly that PAs must be located in diverse regions that encompass species not currently protected and must be large enough to ensure that protected species can persist for the long term.
保护区（PA）是全球保护的基石，也是国际计划减少全球物种灭绝的核心。在未来的一个世纪里，与人口增长和经济活动相关的全球生态系统破坏和碎片化可能会使大多数陆地脊椎动物的长期生存更加依赖于保护区。然而，目前全球保护区网络长期维持物种生存的能力尚不清楚。在这里，我们针对所有非飞行陆地哺乳动物进行了探讨，这些动物是我们发现有足够数据的物种，约有 4000 种。我们首先估算了每个这样的哺乳动物物种在每个保护区中的潜在种群规模，然后使用三种不同的标准来估算当前全球保护区网络是否足以保证它们的长期生存。我们的分析表明，目前的保护区可能无法为大约一半的分析物种提供强有力的保护，包括大多数目前被列为濒危物种的物种和三分之一目前未被列为濒危物种的物种。数以百计的哺乳动物物种似乎没有可行的受保护种群。受保护不足的物种存在于所有体型、分类群和地理区域。大型哺乳动物、特有物种以及高生物多样性的热带地区的物种尤其没有得到现有保护区的充分保护。随着新的国际生物多样性目标的制定，我们的研究结果表明，全球保护区网络必须大大扩大，最重要的是，保护区必须位于多样化的地区，包括目前不受保护的物种，并且必须足够大，以确保受保护的物种能够长期生存。
