Global Protected Areas as refuges for amphibians and reptiles under climate change

MI, CH.; MA, L.; YANG, M.; LI, X.; MEIRI, S.; ROLL, U.; OSKYRKO, O. ; PINCHEIRA-DONOSO, D.; HARVEY, L.; JABLONSKI, D.; SAFAEI-MAHROO, B.; GHAFFARI, H. ; SMID, J.; JARVIE, S.; KIMANI, R.; MASROOR, R.; KAZEMI, S.; NNEJI, L. ; FOKOUA, A.M.T.; TABOUE, G.C.T.; BAUER, A.; NOGUEIRA, C.; MEIRTE, D.; CHAPPLE, D.G.; DAS, I.; GRISMER, L.; AVILA, L.J.; RIBEIRO JUNIOR, M.A. ; TALLOWIN, O.J.S.; TORRES-CARVAJAL, O.; WAGNER, P.; RON, S.R.; WANG, Y.; ITESCU, Y. ; NAGY, Z.T.; WILCOVE, D.S.; LIU, X.; DU, W.

NATURE COMMUNICATIONS

Springer Nature

Año: 2023 p. 1 - 11

2041-1723

Protected Areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation. Here,we collated distributional data for >14,000 (~70% of) species of amphibiansand reptiles (herpetofauna) to perform a global assessment of the conservation effectiveness of PAs using species distribution models. Our analysesreveal that >91% of herpetofauna species are currently distributed in PAs, andthat this proportion will remain unaltered under future climate change.Indeed, loss of species’ distributional ranges will be lower inside PAs thanoutside them. Therefore, the proportion of effectively protected species ispredicted to increase. However, over 7.8% of species currently occur outsidePAs, and large spatial conservation gaps remain, mainly across tropical andsubtropical moist broadleaf forests, and across non-high-income countries.We also predict that more than 300 amphibian and 500 reptile species may goextinct under climate change over the course of the ongoing century. Ourstudy highlights the importance of PAs in providing herpetofauna with refugefrom climate change, and suggests ways to optimize PAs to better conservebiodiversity worldwide.