In an era of massive biodiversity loss, the greatest conservation success story has been the
growth of protected land globally. Protected areas are the primary defense against …

Humans have altered terrestrial ecosystems for millennia [1], yet wilderness areas still
remain as vital refugia where natural ecological and evolutionary processes operate with …

The vast scope of conservation problems has forced biologists and managers to rely on"
surrogate" species to serve as shortcuts to guide their decision making. These species …

Habitat loss is the greatest threat to biodiversity and rapid, human-forced climate change is
likely to exacerbate this. Here we present the first global assessment of current and potential …

Aim The diversity of birds and mammals is typically described in separate analyses, but
species may play similar roles. Here, we develop a comparative trait framework for birds and …

Anthropogenic conversion of natural habitats is the greatest threat to biodiversity and one of
the primary reasons for establishing protected areas (PAs). Here, we show that PA …

The world's zoogeographical regions were historically defined on an intuitive basis, with no
or a limited amount of analytical testing. Here, we aimed (a) to compare analytically defined …

Limited resources are available to address the world's growing environmental problems,
requiring conservationists to identify priority sites for action. Using new distribution maps for …

Global climate change is continuing to occur at an alarming rate. In addition to increases in
global weather extremes, melting of polar ice caps, and subsequent sea level rises, climate …

Networks of protected areas (PAs) form the backbone for biodiversity conservation
worldwide. The effectiveness of protected areas has been studied and it has been shown …