Just ten percent of the global terrestrial protected area network is structurally connected via intact land
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Saura, Santiago
Williams, Brooke
Ramirez-Delgado, Juan Pablo
Arafeh-Dalmau, Nur
Allan, James R
Venter, Oscar
Dubois, Gregoire
Watson, James EM
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Land free of direct anthropogenic disturbance is considered essential for achieving biodiversity conservation outcomes but is rapidly eroding. In response, many nations are increasing their protected area (PA) estates, but little consideration is given to the context of the surrounding landscape. This is despite the fact that structural connectivity between PAs is critical in a changing climate and mandated by international conservation targets. Using a high-resolution assessment of human pressure, we show that while ~40% of the terrestrial planet is intact, only 9.7% of Earth’s terrestrial protected network can be considered structurally connected. On average, 11% of each country or territory’s PA estate can be considered connected. As the global community commits to bolder action on abating biodiversity loss, placement of future PAs will be critical, as will an increased focus on landscape-scale habitat retention and restoration efforts to ensure those important areas set aside for conservation outcomes will remain (or become) connected.
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Nature Communications
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11
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© The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Ward, M; Saura, S; Williams, B; Ramirez-Delgado, JP; Arafeh-Dalmau, N; Allan, JR; Venter, O; Dubois, G; Watson, JEM, Just ten percent of the global terrestrial protected area network is structurally connected via intact land, Nature Communications, 2020, 11, pp. 4563