8
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Deficiencies in Natura 2000 for protecting recovering large carnivores: A spotlight on the wolf Canis lupus in Poland

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          If protected areas are to remain relevant in our dynamic world they must be adapted to changes in species ranges. In the EU one of the most notable such changes is the recent recovery of large carnivores, which are protected by Natura 2000 at the national and population levels. However, the Natura 2000 network was designed prior to their recent recovery, which raises the question whether the network is sufficient to protect the contemporary ranges of large carnivores. To investigate this question we evaluated Natura 2000 coverage of the three wolf Canis lupus populations in Poland. Wolf tracking data showed that wolves have recolonised almost all suitable habitat in Poland (as determined by a recent habitat suitability model), so we calculated the overlap between the Natura 2000 network and all wolf habitat in Poland. On the basis of published Natura 2000 criteria, we used 20% as the minimum required coverage. At the national level, wolves are sufficiently protected (22% coverage), but at the population level, the Baltic and Carpathian populations are far better protected (28 and 47%, respectively) than the endangered Central European Lowland population (12%). As Natura 2000 insufficiently protects the most endangered wolf population in Poland, we recommend expansion of Natura 2000 to protect at least an additional 8% of wolf habitat in western Poland, and discuss which specific forests are most in need of additional coverage. Implementation of these actions will have positive conservation implications and help Poland to fulfil its Habitats Directive obligations. As it is likely that similar gaps in Natura 2000 are arising in other EU member states experiencing large carnivore recoveries, particularly in Central Europe, we make the case for a flexible approach to Natura 2000 and suggest that such coverage evaluations may be beneficial elsewhere.

          Related collections

          Most cited references41

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Recovery of large carnivores in Europe's modern human-dominated landscapes.

          The conservation of large carnivores is a formidable challenge for biodiversity conservation. Using a data set on the past and current status of brown bears (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), gray wolves (Canis lupus), and wolverines (Gulo gulo) in European countries, we show that roughly one-third of mainland Europe hosts at least one large carnivore species, with stable or increasing abundance in most cases in 21st-century records. The reasons for this overall conservation success include protective legislation, supportive public opinion, and a variety of practices making coexistence between large carnivores and people possible. The European situation reveals that large carnivores and people can share the same landscape. Copyright © 2014, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Effectiveness of parks in protecting tropical biodiversity.

            We assessed the impacts of anthropogenic threats on 93 protected areas in 22 tropical countries to test the hypothesis that parks are an effective means to protect tropical biodiversity. We found that the majority of parks are successful at stopping land clearing, and to a lesser degree effective at mitigating logging, hunting, fire, and grazing. Park effectiveness correlates with basic management activities such as enforcement, boundary demarcation, and direct compensation to local communities, suggesting that even modest increases in funding would directly increase the ability of parks to protect tropical biodiversity.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Article: not found

              Usefulness of the Umbrella Species Concept as a Conservation Tool

                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: ResourcesRole: SoftwareRole: SupervisionRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Formal analysisRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Data curation
                Role: Data curation
                Role: Data curation
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: MethodologyRole: SupervisionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                5 September 2017
                2017
                : 12
                : 9
                : e0184144
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Institute of Genetics and Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
                [2 ] Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Białowieża, Poland
                [3 ] Association for Nature “Wolf”, Twardorzeczka, Poland
                Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, ITALY
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0693-4168
                Article
                PONE-D-17-19000
                10.1371/journal.pone.0184144
                5584752
                28873090
                2fad39d8-afd3-4ab7-924e-d6e6944dcd8f
                © 2017 Diserens et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 17 May 2017
                : 18 August 2017
                Page count
                Figures: 3, Tables: 4, Pages: 20
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004281, Narodowe Centrum Nauki;
                Award ID: DEC-2014/12/S/NZ8/00624
                Award Recipient :
                Wolf monitoring conducted by the Association for Nature “Wolf” is supported by EuroNature (Germany) ( www.euronatur.org), International Fund for Animal Welfare IFAW (Germany) ( www.ifaw.org), and Wolves and Humans Foundation (UK) ( www.wolvesandhumans.org). RWM postdoctoral internship was funded by the National Science Centre (Poland) ( www.ncn.gov.pl), grant number DEC-2014/12/S/NZ8/00624. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                People and Places
                Geographical Locations
                Europe
                Poland
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Conservation Science
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Ecology
                Ecosystems
                Forests
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Ecology
                Ecosystems
                Forests
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Terrestrial Environments
                Forests
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Amniotes
                Mammals
                Wolves
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Ecology
                Community Ecology
                Trophic Interactions
                Carnivory
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Ecology
                Community Ecology
                Trophic Interactions
                Carnivory
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Habitats
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Ecology
                Biodiversity
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Ecology
                Biodiversity
                People and Places
                Geographical Locations
                Europe
                Custom metadata
                All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

                Comments

                Comment on this article