Large Protected Areas Buffer Against Climate Change Effects on Bird Populations in Northern Europe
Leena Hintsanen, Aleksi Lehikoinen, Ari Rajasärkkä, Tero Toivanen, Emma‐Liina MarjakangasABSTRACT
Aim
The conservation of species relies strongly on protected areas (PAs), but the current network of PAs is not sufficient to mitigate the biodiversity crisis. PAs are under constant pressure from the local and global climate and environmental changes. In addition, the terrestrial PA network is biassed towards high latitudes and even there, the mean size of PAs is small. Here, we aimed to assess the effect of PA size on changes in population sizes across the decades of intensifying climate warming.
Location
Boreal bird populations in PAs in Finland.
Methods
We compared the bird population sizes in 245 PAs of different sizes between two study periods of 1980–1999 and 2010–2022. We also assessed whether the population trends depended on the species' temperature preferences.
Results
We found that the overall trends of bird populations did not depend on PA size, but species' temperature preference influenced the direction of population trends and the importance of the PA size. Our results indicate latitudinal variation, such that the large PAs could buffer against decreasing population trends only in northern Finland, where the PAs are larger than in other parts of the country. Moreover, in northern Finland, species preferring cooler temperatures had decreasing populations inside small but not large PAs.
Main Conclusions
Small PAs have a limited capacity to slow down the biodiversity loss in terms of declines of cold‐dwelling species. Our results highlight the undeniable importance of large PAs in the boreal zone in species conservation under climate change.