Current protected areas provide limited benefits for European river biodiversity
James S. Sinclair, Rachel Stubbington, Ellen A. R. Welti, Jukka Aroviita, Nathan Jay Baker, Miguel Cañedo‐Argüelles, Zoltán Csabai, David Cunillera‐Montcusí, Sami Domisch, Martial Ferréol, Mathieu Floury, Marie Anne Eurie Forio, Peter Goethals, Alexia María González-Ferreras, Kaisa-Leena Huttunen, Richard K. Johnson, Lenka Kuglerová, Aitor Larrañaga, Timo Muotka, Riku Paavola, Petr Pařil, Jes Jessen Rasmussen, Ralf B. Schäfer, Rudy Vannevel, Gábor Várbíró, Martin Wilkes, Peter Haase
Abstract
Protected areas are a principal conservation tool for addressing biodiversity loss. Such protection is especially needed in freshwaters, given their greater biodiversity losses compared to terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, broad-scale evaluations of protected area effectiveness for freshwater biodiversity are lacking. Here, we provide a continental-scale analysis of the relationship between protected areas and freshwater biodiversity using 1,754 river invertebrate community time series sampled between 1986 and 2022 across ten European countries. Protected areas primarily benefited poor-quality communities (indicative of higher human impacts) that were protected, or that gained protection, across a substantial proportion of their upstream catchment. Protection had little to no influence on moderate- and high-quality communities, although high-quality communities potentially provide less scope for effect. Our results reveal the overall limited effectiveness of current protected areas for freshwater biodiversity, likely because they are typically designed and managed to achieve terrestrial conservation goals. Broadly improving effectiveness for freshwater biodiversity requires catchment-scale management approaches involving larger and more continuous upstream protection, and efforts to address remaining stressors. These approaches would also benefit connected terrestrial and coastal ecosystems, thus generally helping bend the curve of global biodiversity loss.