Future-proofing conservation: applying systematic conservation planning to prevent extinction under climate and land use change

Humans have been reshaping the environment of Earth for thousands of years. However, the intensity of anthropogenic pressures has rapidly increased in recent decades, pushing an evergreater number of species towards extinction. The primary driver of modern extinctions is habitat loss, while climate change is projected to become the leading cause of biodiversity loss in the future. To mitigate these impacts and reverse these trends, nations have committed to halt the extinction of threatened species by mid-century, and to protect 30% of global land and sea by 2030 (known as the ‘30 by 30’ target). There is now an urgent need to understand how such targets can be achieved in a way that is deliverable, effective, and resilient to future climate and land use change. To answer this question, my thesis considers how systematic conservation planning approaches can optimise conservation interventions both in situ (such as protected area planning) and ex situ (such as conservation of threatened species in zoos). I show that both existing protected areas and current zoo collections must evolve significantly if they are to avoid being outpaced by anthropogenic environmental change. First, I model the impact of climate change on most of the world’s terrestrial vertebrate species (n = 24,598), and identify spatial and phylogenetic shifts in the distribution of threatened biodiversity globally. Using these data, I highlight spatial priorities for area-based conservation, achieving 30 by 30 in a manner that maximises the long-term conservation of threatened evolutionary history under environmental change. I then turn to ex situ conservation in zoos, finding that collections must adapt significantly if they are to conserve the taxa most threatened by climate and land use change. As zoos must house appealing species that drive visitation rates, I then investigate the traits that underpin species attractiveness to zoo visitors, with highly active, visible mammals proving the most attractive. I use these results to highlight opportunities to leverage species appeal and maximise investment in conservation. Finally, I bring this information together and apply, for the first time, conservation optimisation algorithms to zoo collection planning at global and regional scales. Such approaches can increase the protection of threatened evolutionary history by approximately an order of magnitude, both in situ and ex situ, relative to existing protected areas and zoo collections, respectively. These results pose both a challenge and an opportunity to the conservation community, highlighting both the scale of adaptation required, but also the huge potential conservation benefits that could be achieved, even as anthropogenic climate and land use change intensify.