Cliffs as priority ecosystems

作者：Martí March‐Salas, Juan Lorite, Oliver Bossdorf, J. F. Scheepens · 发表于：Conservation Biology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1111/cobi.14166 · 被引用次数：23 · 研究领域：Species Distribution and Climate Change、Wildlife-Road Interactions and Conservation、Fire effects on ecosystems

In December 2022, the 15th Conference of Parties of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15) was held to discuss halting global biodiversity loss by 2030. To prevent governments from failing again, as they did with the previous global biodiversity target for 2010 (Butchart et al., 2010), the new pact sets more specific conservation goals. For instance, nations are expected to prioritize the protection of fragile ecosystems with high ecological integrity and high biodiversity (UN CBD, 2022). One ecosystem that particularly fulfils these criteria is cliffs. Cliffs, all over the world, harbor a large diversity of endemic plants, endangered species, and rock-dwelling birds and bats (Larson et al., 2000). Specifically, cliffs hold 35–66% of the endemic plant taxa of most countries (Ellenberg, 1988; Larson et al., 2000; Wardle, 1991) and provide vital climatic and ecological refuges for rare species and millennial-old trees, as recently discovered with the oldest living tree in the European Union (Sangüesa-Barreda et al., 2022). Despite cliffs have been among the least human-disturbed ecosystems, many of them are now under pressure from the huge increase in popularity of climbing (deCastro-Arrazola et al., 2021; Kelly & Larson, 1997; March-Salas et al., 2018, 2023). Climbing has turned from a niche sport to a worldwide sensation. In the United States, the number of climbers has increased from <500,000 in the late 1990s to over 10 million. Worldwide there are an estimated 5...