Mismatch between bird species sensitivity and the protection of intact habitats across the Americas

Protected areas are highly heterogeneous in their effectiveness at buffering human pressure, which may hamper their ability to conserve species highly sensitive to human activities. Here, we use 60 million bird observations from eBird to estimate the sensitivity to human pressure of each bird specie...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology letters 2021-11, Vol.24 (11), p.2394-2405
Main Authors: Cazalis, Victor, Barnes, Megan D., Johnston, Alison, Watson, James E. M., Şekercioğlu, Cagan H., Rodrigues, Ana S. L., Davies, Jonathan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biodiversity and Ecology
Birds
Breeding
conservation
Environmental restoration
Environmental Sciences
Habitats
human footprint
Protected areas
Protected species
Sensitivity
threatened species
wilderness
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Summary:Protected areas are highly heterogeneous in their effectiveness at buffering human pressure, which may hamper their ability to conserve species highly sensitive to human activities. Here, we use 60 million bird observations from eBird to estimate the sensitivity to human pressure of each bird species breeding in the Americas. Concerningly, we find that ecoregions hosting large proportions of high‐sensitivity species, concentrated in tropical biomes, do not have more intact protected habitat. Moreover, 266 high‐sensitivity species have little or no intact protected habitat within their distributions. Finally, we show that protected area intactness is decreasing faster where high‐sensitivity species concentrate. Our results highlight a major mismatch between species conservation needs and the coverage of intact protected habitats, which likely hampers the long‐term effectiveness of protected areas at retaining species. We highlight ecoregions where protection and management of intact habitats, complemented by restoration, is urgently needed. Species vary in their sensitivity to human activities. We provide a new method to calculate species sensitivity to human pressure and show that there is no correlation between the distribution of high‐sensitivity species and the distribution of intact protected habitats. In addition, human pressure keeps increasing specifically where high‐sensitivity species are the most abundant.
ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/ele.13859