Assessing the global impact of targeted conservation actions on species abundance

Abstract

In recent years, vertebrate population abundance has declined at unprecedented rates. In response, targeted conservation measures such as breeding programs or species-specific habitat management have been applied to halt population declines, aid population recovery, and reduce and reverse the loss of biodiversity. Until now, assessments of conservation actions have focused on the extent to which they reduce extinction risk, impact populations within protected areas, or increase the global area of land under protection. Here, we record and analyze conservation actions for 26,904 vertebrate populations from 4,629 species, to measure the impact of targeted conservation on vertebrate abundance. Using a counterfactual approach to represent population trends in the absence of conservation, we demonstrate that targeted actions have delivered substantial positive effects on the abundance of recipient vertebrate populations worldwide. We show that, in the absence of conservation, a global indicator of vertebrate abundance would have declined even more. Positive population trends were associated with vertebrate populations subject to species or habitat management. We demonstrate that targeted conservation actions can help to reverse global biodiversity loss and show the value of counterfactual analysis for impact evaluation, an important step towards reversing biodiversity declines.

Rare and declining bird species benefit most from designating protected areas for conservation in the UK

“…The location of PAs is non-random, with more PAs in upland areas further away from human habitation 67 . We accounted for this by including relevant confounding covariates in our analysis but an alternative approach is to create a statistical counterfactual by 'matching' treatment and non-treatment sites on the basis of similarity in these (or other) covariates [68][69][70] . Therefore, we also undertook an analysis where we 'matched' (for each PA type separately) squares with PA (defined as those with >10% coverage) with similar squares with no PA coverage.…”

Past, present, and future of the Living Planet Index

“…The LPI is part of a suite of biodiversity indicators adopted by the CBD, measuring trends in relative abundance of vertebrates and deployed to monitor progress towards the 2010 Biodiversity Target 19 , subsequent 2020 Aichi targets 4 , and is one of the indicators within Goal A of the Post-2020 Biodiversity Monitoring Framework 39 . As a measure of population trends compiled at annual intervals, the LPI is sensitive enough to detect annual changes, which is of value for informing policy 15 and evaluating the impact of conservation interventions 40 . 19 ZSL and WWF joined the Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (BIP) in 2007 to further develop the LPI and make it available for use under the CBD strategic plan.…”

“…Protected areas and protected area management [96][97][98][99] Impacts of conservation management on species 40 and threatened species 36,100 Living Planet Index for recovering populations of European mammals and birds 37 Living Planet Index for utilized species 101,102 Trends in target and bycatch species (oceanic sharks and rays) 103 Other influences of the LPI Index of Linguistic Diversity 104,105 The Wetland Extent Trends Index 106,107 Sustainability Policy Transparency Toolkit (SPOTT) Index 108 The Species Awareness Index (SAI) 109 Table 1…”

Recovering birds and mammals across Europe continue to be negatively impacted by threats but benefit from conservation measures

“…A) Frequency of identified threats for mammal populations, and (B) identified population management information within the Living Planet database. Categories were assigned using the IUCN Red List Threat classification scheme or IUCN Red List Conservation action classification (after Jellesmark et al 2022). …”

“…The definition of whether a population is "Managed" within the Living Planet Database follows the relevant IUCN-CMP conservation actions and research actions classification schemes as discussed in Jellesmark et al (2022). Fig S3 shows the frequency of management actions and different threat types encoded in the LPI for these species populations.…”