Effectiveness of protected areas in conserving tropical forest birds.

ABSTRACT: Protected areas (PAs) are the cornerstones of global biodiversity conservation efforts, but to fulfil this role they must be effective at conserving the ecosystems and species that occur within their boundaries. Adequate monitoring datasets that allow comparing biodiversity between protected and unprotected sites are lacking in tropical regions. Here we use the largest citizen science biodiversity dataset - eBird - to quantify the extent to which protected areas in eight tropical forest biodiversity hotspots are effective at retaining bird diversity. We find generally positive effects of protection on the diversity of bird species that are forest-dependent, endemic to the hotspots, or threatened or Near Threatened, but not on overall bird species richness. Furthermore, we show that in most

SUBMITTER: Cazalis V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7490714 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature