How many bird and mammal extinctions has recent conservation action prevented? Friederike Bolam, Louise Mair, Marco Angelico, Thomas Brooks, Mark Burgman, Claudia Hermes, Michael Hoffmann, Rob Martin, Philip Mcgowan, Ana Rodrigues, et al. To cite this version: Friederike Bolam, Louise Mair, Marco Angelico, Thomas Brooks, Mark Burgman, et al.. How many bird and mammal extinctions has recent conservation action prevented?. Conservation Letters, Wiley, 2020, 10.1111/conl.12762. hal-03013092 HAL Id: hal-03013092 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03013092 Submitted on 18 Nov 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Received: 12 February 2020 Revised: 10 August 2020 Accepted: 23 August 2020 DOI: 10.1111/conl.12762 LETTER How many bird and mammal extinctions has recent conservation action prevented? Friederike C. Bolam1 Louise Mair1 Marco Angelico2 Thomas M. Brooks3,4,5 Mark Burgman6 Claudia Hermes7 Michael Hoffmann8 Rob W. Martin7 Philip J.K. McGowan1 Ana S.L. Rodrigues9 Carlo Rondinini2 James R.S. Westrip10 Hannah Wheatley7 Yuliana Bedolla-Guzmán11 Javier Calzada12 Matthew F. Child13,14 Peter A. Cranswick15 Christopher R. Dickman16,17 Birgit Fessl18 Diana O. Fisher19 Stephen T. Garnett20,17 Jim J. Groombridge21 Christopher N. Johnson22 Rosalind J. Kennerley23 Sarah R.B. King24 John F. Lamoreux25 Alexander C. Lees26,27 Luc Lens28 Simon P. Mahood29,20 David P. Mallon26,30 Erik Meijaard31,21 Federico Méndez-Sánchez11,32 Alexandre Reis Percequillo33 Tracey J. Regan34,35 Luis Miguel Renjifo36 Malin C. Rivers37 Nicolette S. Roach38,39 Lizanne Roxburgh40 Roger J. Safford7 Paul Salaman41 Tom Squires26 Ella Vázquez-Domínguez42 Piero Visconti43,44 John C.Z. Woinarski20,17 Richard P. Young23 Stuart H.M. Butchart7,45 1 School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK 2 Global Mammal Assessment Program, Department of Biology and Biotechnologies, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy 3 IUCN, Gland, Switzerland 4 World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), University of The Philippines Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines 5 Institute for Marine & Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia 6 Imperial College London, London, UK 7 BirdLife International, Cambridge, UK 8 Zoological Society of London, London, UK 9 CEFE, Univ. Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Univ. Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, Montpellier, France 10 Global Species Programme, IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), Cambridge, UK 11 Grupo de Ecología y Conservación de Islas, A.C., Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico 12 Department of Integrated Sciences, University of Huelva, Huelva, Spain 13 South African National Biodiversity Institute, Pretoria, South Africa 14 Mammal Research Institute, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa 15 The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, UK 16 School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia 17 Threatened Species Recovery Hub, National Environmental Science Program, Brisbane, Australia This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2020 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals LLC Conservation Letters. 2020;e12762. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/conl 1of11 https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12762 2of11 BOLAM et al. 18 Charles Darwin Research Station, Charles Darwin Foundation, Galapagos, Ecuador 19 School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia 20 Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University, Casuarina, Australia 21 Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK 22 School of Natural Sciences and ARC Centre for Australian Biodiversity & Heritage, University of Tasmania, Tasmania, Australia 23 Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, Channel Islands, UK 24 Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 25 Reston, Virginia 26 Department of Natural Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK 27 Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 28 Department of Biology, Terrestrial Ecology Unit, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium 29 Wildlife Conservation Society, Phnom Penh, Cambodia 30 IUCN Species Survival Commission, Gland, Switzerland 31 Borneo Futures, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam 32 Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste, S.C., La Paz, Baja California, Mexico 33 Escola Superior de Agricultura “Luiz de Queiroz,”, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil 34 The Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Environment Land Water and Planning, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia 35 School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia 36 Department of Ecology and Territory, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia 37 Botanic Gardens Conservation International, Richmond, UK 38 Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 39 Global Wildlife Conservation, Austin, Texas 40 Endangered Wildlife Trust, Johannesburg, South Africa 41 Rasmussen Family Foundation, Santa Clara, Utah 42 Departamento de Ecología de la Biodiversidad, Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico 43 International Institute for Applied System Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria 44 Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research, University College London, London, UK 45 Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Correspondence Philip J.K. McGowan, School of Natural Abstract and Environmental Sciences, Newcastle Aichi Target 12 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) contains the University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK. aim to ‘prevent extinctions of known threatened species’. To measure the degree Email: [email protected] to which this was achieved, we used expert elicitation to estimate the number of bird and mammal species whose extinctions were prevented by conservation action in 1993–2020 (the lifetime of the CBD) and 2010–2020 (the timing of Aichi Target 12). We found that conservation action prevented 21–32 bird and 7–16 mammal extinctions since 1993, and 9–18 bird and two to seven mammal extinc- tions since 2010. Many remain highly threatened and may still become extinct. Considering that 10 bird and five mammal species did go extinct (or are strongly suspected to) since 1993, extinction rates would have been 2.9–4.2 times greater without conservation action. While policy commitments have fostered signifi- cant conservation achievements, future biodiversity action needs to be scaled up to avert additional extinctions. KEYWORDS Aichi biodiversity target 12, Convention on Biological Diversity, Delphi method, extinction risk, species conservation, IUCN Red List BOLAM et al. 3of11 1 INTRODUCTION in a counterfactual scenario without conservation action; The Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity and (d) retaining species with a high probability that con- (CBD) adopted an ambitious strategic plan for 2011–2020, servation action prevented their extinction. We combined comprising 20 ‘Aichi Biodiversity Targets’. Target 12 states our results with the number of known extinctions to quan- that ‘By 2020, the extinction of known threatened species has tify the effect of conservation action on observed extinction been prevented and their conservation status, particularly of rates. For full details of methods, see the Supporting Infor- those most in decline, has been improved and sustained’. A mation. mid-term assessment concluded that further extinctions were likely by 2020, but that conservation measures had prevented some extinctions (CBD, 2014). 2.1 Identifying and documenting Considering compelling evidence of a continued dete- candidate species rioration of the state of nature under increasing pres- sures (Díaz et al., 2019; IPBES, 2019), investigating the To be included as candidates, species had to be listed as impact of conservation efforts is key to evaluating whether extinct in the wild, critically endangered or endangered we have the knowledge and techniques to reverse neg- on the Red List at any time since 1993, with ongoing ative trends, and to galvanise further action. Previous threats to their persistence and with conservation actions assessments of conservation impact investigated whether implemented. We examined all bird and mammal species. trends in extinction risk would have changed if no species First, species currently classified as extinct in the wild had improved in conservation status (Hoffmann et al., would be extinct without captive breeding; therefore, we 2010; Szabo, Butchart, Possingham, & Garnett, 2012), or considered them to have 100% probability that extinction if no conservation actions had taken place (e.g., Hoff- was prevented. Second, among critically endangered and mann et al.,