Protection Reduces Loss of Natural Land-cover at Sites of Conservation Importance Across Africa

There is an emerging consensus that protected areas may be effective at reducing adverse land-cover change, but their efficacy remains difficult to quantify. Many previous assessments of protected area effectiveness have compared changes on sets of protected and unprotected sites that differ systematically in other potentially confounding respects (e.g. altitude, accessibility), have considered only forest loss or single sites, or have analysed changes derived from coarse resolution land-cover data. We assessed the effectiveness of protection in reducing land-cover change in African Important Bird Areas (IBAs) using a dedicated visual interpretation of change from higher resolution satellite imagery. We compared rates of natural land-cover loss at points across 45 protected IBAs with those from 48 unprotected IBAs over a c. 20-year period. We used a matching algorithm to select sample points, controlling for systematic differences between protected and unprotected IBAs. The rate of loss of natural land-cover within protected IBAs was just 42% of that on similar unprotected IBAs. Protection reduced rates of forest loss by a similar relative amount, although absolute rates of loss were over twice those for all natural land cover. Rates of conversion increased towards the edges of both protected and unprotected IBAs, but the similar rates of loss in areas surrounding protected IBAs and unprotected IBAs suggested no evidence of displacement of conversion from within protected areas to their surrounds (leakage).

BERESFORD Alison;  ESHIAMWATA George W.;  DONALD Paul F.;  BALMFORD Andrew;  BERTZKY Bastian;  BRINK Andreas;  FISHPOOL Lincoln D. C.;  MAYAUX Philippe;  PHALAN Ben;  SIMONETTI Dario;  BUCHANAN Graeme M.; 

2013-06-02

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE

JRC81466

1932-6203,   

www.plosone.org,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC81466,   

10.1371/journal.pone.0065370,