Catastrophic Declines in Wilderness Areas Undermine Global Environment Targets.
Humans have altered terrestrial ecosystems for millennia [1], yet wilderness areas still remain as vital refugia where natural ecological and evolutionary processes operate with minimal human disturbance [2-4], underpinning key regional- and planetary-scale functions [5, 6]. Despite the myriad values of wilderness areas-as critical strongholds for endangered biodiversity [7], for carbon storage and sequestration [8], for buffering and regulating local climates [9], and for supporting many of the world's most politically and economically marginalized communities [10]-they are almost entirely ignored in multilateral environmental agreements. This is because they are assumed to be relatively free from threatening processes and therefore are not a priority for conservation efforts [11, 12]. Here we challenge this assertion using new comparable maps of global wilderness following methods established in the original "last of the wild" analysis [13] to examine the change in extent since the early 1990s. We demonstrate alarming losses comprising one-tenth (3.3 million km2) of global wilderness areas over the last two decades, particularly in the Amazon (30%) and central Africa (14%). We assess increases in the protection of wilderness over the same time frame and show that these efforts are failing to keep pace with the rate of wilderness loss, which is nearly double the rate of protection. Our findings underscore an immediate need for international policies to recognize the vital values of wilderness and the unprecedented threats they face and to underscore urgent large-scale, multifaceted actions needed to maintain them.
School of Geography, Planning, and Environmental Management, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia; Wildlife Conservation Society, Global Conservation Program, Bronx, NY 10460, USA. Electronic address: jwatson@wcs.org.
James E M
JEM
Watson
School of Geography, Planning, and Environmental Management, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
Danielle F
DF
Shanahan
School of Geography, Planning, and Environmental Management, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia; ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
Moreno
M
Di Marco
School of Geography, Planning, and Environmental Management, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
James
J
Allan
Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science and College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD 4878, Australia.
William F
WF
Laurance
Wildlife Conservation Society, Global Conservation Program, Bronx, NY 10460, USA.
Eric W
EW
Sanderson
Griffith Climate Change Response Program, Griffith University, Parklands Drive, Southport, QLD 4215, Australia.
Brendan
B
Mackey
Ecosystem Science and Management, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC V2N 2M7, Canada.
Oscar
O
Venter
D000350:Africa, Central; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D017753:Ecosystem; D058735:Environmental Policy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D013020:South America; D055814:Wilderness
Convention for Biological Diversity; conservation biology; environmental mapping; habitat intactness; human footprint; remote sensing; spatial planning; spatial prioritization; wilderness