title: Reserves in Context: Planning for Leakage from Protected Areas.
abstract: When protected areas reduce threats within their boundaries, they often displace a portion of these threats into adjacent areas through a process known as 'leakage', undermining conservation objectives. Using theoretical models and a case study of terrestrial mammals in Indonesia, we develop the first theoretical explanation of how leakage impacts conservation actions, and highlight conservation strategies that mitigate these impacts. Although leakage is a socio-economic process, we demonstrate that its negative impacts are also affected by the distribution of species, with leakage having larger impacts in landscapes with homogeneous distribution of species richness. Moreover, leakage has a greater negative effect when conservation strategies are implemented opportunistically, even creating the potential for perversely negative consequences from protected area establishment. Leakage thereby increases the relative benefits of systematic conservation planning over opportunism, especially in areas with high leakage and heterogeneously distributed species. Although leakage has the potential to undermine conservation actions, conservation planning can minimize this risk.
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, the NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, Centre, for Biodiversity & Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Anna R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Renwick
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, School of Botany, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bode
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, the NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, Centre, for Biodiversity & Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia; Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science and the School of Marine and Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia.
authors.forename: Oscar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Venter
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D007214:Indonesia; D008322:Mammals; D013045:Species Specificity