Proyecto Ognorhynchos/Paul Salaman The Yellow-eared Parrot is Critically Endangered and numbers around 150 individuals. It lives in the Colombian Andes outside of any protected areas Zoom In

Mind the 'gap species'

08-04-2004

A team of leading conservation scientists, including representatives from BirdLife, has demonstrated that the percentage of protected areas in a given country is a poor indicator of additional conservation needs and that, contrary to frequent recommendations, current protection levels should not be used as a significant guide for future allocations of protected areas. Their findings are published today in the latest issue of Nature.

By examining the distributions of groups of animals, including birds, mammals, turtles and amphibians, the team found that many had ranges that fell outside the current protected areas system. To include more of these 'gap species' (such as the Yellow-eared Parrot from Ecuador and Colombia) within protected areas, what is needed is not a fixed percentage of each country to be included within protected areas. Rather, because the distribution of animals is not uniform, a much higher percentage of land is needed within protected areas in regions rich in endemic species, such as the Andes, and south-east Asian islands. In other words, the expansion of the global network of protected areas must account for the uneven distribution of biodiversity and not rely on general percentage-based targets formed largely by political and feasibility considerations.

"The world's larger protected areas currently exclude 37% of all threatened bird species." —Lincoln Fishpool, BirdLife

Protected areas today cover 11.5% of the planet's surface, surpassing the 10% target set in 1993 by the IUCN at its World Parks Congress in Caracas. However, the team has clearly demonstrated that merely setting a target percentage is not a realistic approach to protecting the world's biodiversity and that the global protected area network is still far from complete - for instance 12% of the species they examined are currently not represented in any protected area.

One of the paper's authors, BirdLife's Lincoln Fishpool, commented "BirdLife's data on the distribution of threatened birds found that the world's larger protected areas currently exclude 37% of all threatened bird species. Although this is better than if these areas had been chosen randomly across the planet it still shows that we need to designate more sites. BirdLife's Important Bird Area programme is leading the way in identifying just where these additional sites should be located."