Key Biodiversity Areas and Important Plant Areas can help build ecologically representative Protected and Conserved Area networks to meet 30-by-30

Joe Frederick Langley , Thomas Starnes, Moabe Fernandes, Steven Bachman, Andrew J Plumptre, Olivia Crowe, Laura Kor, Sophie Jago, Fiona Perez, Robert J. Smith, Joseph D.M. White, Carolina Tovar, Iain Darbyshire, James S. Borrell

Aim: Meeting the Global Biodiversity Framework’s Target 3 (“30-by-30”) requires rapidly expanding protected and conserved area (PA) networks, while improving their ecological representation. We assess whether key biodiversity areas (KBAs) and important plant areas (IPAs) – sites identified using evidence-based biodiversity criteria – provide additionality across biogeographic space and species to PAs and could therefore guide more representative expansion.

Location: Twenty-eight countries with established PA, KBA and IPA networks.

Methods: We characterised ecological representation using two approaches: biogeographic space (multivariate environmental variation from bioclimatic, topographic and soil variables, using kernel density estimation) and species ranges (plants, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles). For PAs, KBAs and IPAs we tested for differences among networks, and quantified the additionality KBAs and IPAs could provide to existing PA networks. Finally, we tested whether land identified as a KBA or IPA before 2010 was subsequently more likely to become designated as a PA.

Results: Within countries, networks covered 35.1% (PAs), 41.8% (KBAs) and 28.1% (IPAs) of biogeographic space. The three networks occupied significantly different biogeographic space, both overall and within 82% of studied countries. KBAs and IPAs provided substantial additionality, respectively capturing 14.0% and 11.0% of biogeographic space and 66.8% and 41.0% of species missed by PAs, with threatened species more likely to be captured than non-threatened species, significantly so for IPAs. Within countries, land inside KBAs or IPAs had four-fold higher odds of subsequent PA designation than land outside these two networks.

Main Conclusions: KBAs and IPAs are strongly complementary to PAs, capturing biogeographic space and species that current networks miss. Together they offer a readily available, evidence-based foundation for guiding ecologically representative area-based conservation under Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework and beyond.