Nature Communications (Sep 2020)

Just ten percent of the global terrestrial protected area network is structurally connected via intact land

  • Michelle Ward,
  • Santiago Saura,
  • Brooke Williams,
  • Juan Pablo Ramírez-Delgado,
  • Nur Arafeh-Dalmau,
  • James R. Allan,
  • Oscar Venter,
  • Grégoire Dubois,
  • James E. M. Watson

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18457-x
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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The effectiveness of protected areas depends not only on whether they are intact, but also on whether they are mutually connected. Here the authors examine the structural connectivity of terrestrial protected areas globally, finding that less than 10% of the protected network can be considered connected.