Correction to: Positive impacts of important bird and biodiversity areas on wintering waterbirds under changing temperatures throughout Europe and North Africa (Biol. Conserv. 246 (2020) 108549)

Positive impacts of important bird and biodiversity areas on wintering waterbirds under changing temperatures throughout Europe and North Africa

Clausen, Preben/0000-0001-8986-294X WOS: 000536149100018 Migratory waterbirds require an effectively conserved cohesive network of wetland areas throughout their range and life-cycle. Under rapid climate change, protected area (PA) networks need to be able to accommodate climate-driven range shifts in wildlife if they are to continue to be effective in the future. Thus, we investigated geographical variation in the relationship between local temperature anomaly and the abundance of 61 waterbird species during the wintering season across Europe and North Africa during 1990-2015. We also compared the spatio-temporal effects on abundance of sites designated as PAs, Important Bird and Biodivers…

Protected areas enhance expanding populations and mitigate declines on range edges under climate change

Warming climate is changing geographical distributions of species. However, keeping pace with the climate may be complicated. The climate is indeed changing faster than species are capable of following it. Other environmental changes can hamper the ability of species to move if they face difficulties following climatic preferences in a fragmented landscape. This may lead to increased extinction risk especially for species inhabiting high latitudes and altitudes. These species are expected to be particularly exposed to the consequences of climate change due to the lack of space into which they can retreat. Evidence is mounting that this may indeed be the case, since boreal and montane specie…

Distribution changes, species richness and the role of protected areas in Europe and Northern Africa. The case study of waterbirds

Evidence is accumulating that avian species, and particularly waterbirds, are responding to anthropogenic pressure and climate change by, inter alia, changing their distributions, both in the breeding and non-breeding season. This ongoing process raise a question about the effectiveness of the current network of protected areas delivering climate change adaptation for waterbird species at larger scale than individual countries. To improve the knowledge concerning this topic, we analysed 26 years of data on wintering waterbirds (International Waterbird Census) across 44 countries in Europe and Africa. Specifically, our goals were (1) to test if the winter abundances of 166 species have chang…

The impact of protected area network expansion on the conservation status of Finnish breeding birds

Species extinction risk, often measured by the IUCN Red List status, is a widely used indicator for the state of biodiversity. Changes in the Red List status have shown alarming and rapid declines of biodiversity, both globally and in Finland. As an example, 45% of the 249 breeding bird species in Finland have been considered threatened (Red-listed) in 2015, compared to a significantly lower proportion 36,9% in 2010. Even though protected areas are considered to be a key strategy in halting biodiversity decline, there is limited evidence on the link between the establishment of protected areas and a reduction in extinction risk. The designation and management of protected areas represents a…