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LETTER https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1567-7
Wilderness areas halve the extinction risk of
terrestrial biodiversity
Moreno Di Marco1,2*, Simon Ferrier3, Tom D. Harwood3, Andrew J. Hoskins4 & James E. M. Watson5,6
Reducing the rate of global biodiversity loss is a major challenge
facing humanity
1
, as the consequences of biological annihilation
would be irreversible for humankind2–4. Although the ongoing
degradation of ecosystems5,6 and the extinction of species that
comprise them7,8 are now well-documented, little is known about the
role that remaining wilderness areas have in mitigating the global
biodiversity crisis. Here we model the persistence probabilityof
biodiversity, combininghabitat condition with spatial variation
in species composition, to show that retaining these remaining
wilderness areas is essential for the international conservation
agenda. Wilderness areas act as a buffer against species loss, as
the extinction risk for species within wilderness communities
is—on average—less than half that of species in non-wilderness
communities. Although all wilderness areas have an intrinsic
conservation value9,10, we identify the areas on every continent
that make the highest relative contribution to the persistence of
biodiversity. Alarmingly, these areas—in which habitat loss would
have a more-marked effect on biodiversity—are poorly protected.
Given globally high rates of wilderness loss
10
, these areas urgently
require targeted protection to ensure the long-term persistence of
biodiversity, alongside efforts to protect and restore more-degraded
environments.
Wilderness areas, in which industrial levels of human disturbance
are absent or minimal
9,10
, are the last stronghold of intact ecosystems
across Earth. However, their extent has rapidly decreased over past
decades; more than 10% of the wilderness that existed in the early 1990s
has since been converted to human use
10,11
. Little is known about the
role that wilderness has in supporting the persistence of biodiversity,
as reflected in the absence of wilderness targets in the international
environmental agenda12. Here we address this knowledge gap and pro-
vide—to our knowledge—the first estimate of the global importance
of wilderness areas for the persistence of terrestrial biodiversity. We
use communities of vascular plants and invertebrates as surrogates for
biodiversity, as these highly diverse and customarily understudied13,14
groups represent the largest part of terrestrial biodiversity in terms of
both species numbers and biomass (about 60% of species are inverte-
brates15 and about 80% of biomass is from plants16).
We take advantage of an approach17 that maps the β-diversity of
biological communities—that is, the spatial variation in their species
composition—on the basis of generalized dissimilarity modelling18,19.
1CSIRO Land and Water, Dutton Park EcoSciences Precinct, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. 2Department of Biology and Biotechnology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy. 3CSIRO Land
and Water, Black Mountain Laboratories, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 4CSIRO Health and Biosecurity, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. 5Centre for
Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. 6Global Conservation Program, Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, NY, USA.
*e-mail: moreno.dimarco@gmail.com
Wilderness
Pextinction
0
0.05
0.10
>0.10
>0.20
Australasia
Pextinction
Indomalay
Pextinction
Frequency
Afrotropical
Pextinction
Frequency
Nearctic
Pextinction
Frequency
Neotropical
Pextinction
Frequency
40
30
20
10
0
10
20
30
40
40
30
20
10
0
10
20
30
40
0 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
Palaearctic
Pextinction
Frequency
0 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
0 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
0 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
0 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20
40
30
20
10
0
10
20
30
40
40
30
20
10
0
10
20
30
40
40
30
20
10
0
10
20
30
40
87
30
20
10
0
10
20
30
40
Fig. 1 | Global probabilities of species extinction for communities of
invertebrates and vascular plants associated with 1-km2 grid cells.
The underlying map reports the estimated proportion of native species
(originally associated with a particular grid cell) expected to disappear
completely from their distribution, owing to the current condition of the
habitats in which they occur. The histogram bars represent the relative
frequency distribution of the probability of extinctions (Pextinction) that
were registered within areas of wilderness (green bars) and non-wilderness
(orange bars), for each biogeographical realm.
582 | NATURE | VOL 573 | 26 SEPTEMBER 2019
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