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Low effectiveness of the Natura 2000 network in preventing land-use change in bat hotspots

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Abstract

One of the most important issues in biodiversity conservation is an exploration of the relationships among protected areas, land-use changes and biodiversity, so we aimed to assess the performance of the Natura 2000 network (N2000) in representing the bat conservation hotspots in peninsular Spain and the Balearic Islands and to compare the rates of land-use changes within these hotspots with those observed throughout the rest of the study area. First, we applied a Combined Index that integrates various biodiversity metrics (species richness, rarity and vulnerability) to identify hotspots, and once they were identified, we used null models to assess the performance of N2000 in representing them. Finally, also using null models, we tested whether the changes in land use (“anthropization” or “naturalization”) within the hotspots occurred at a significantly higher or lower frequency than in the rest of the study area; for this, we considered two temporal windows (1980–2006 and 2006–2012) corresponding with periods before and after the official designation of the N2000 sites. Our results show that bat hotspots are effectively represented in the Iberian N2000, but although land-use changes were generally higher in Spain before 2006, hotspots have not experienced lower rates of change compared to the remainder of the territory (regardless of the period under consideration). This suggests low effectiveness of the Iberian N2000 in preventing land-use change in bat hotspots, so to preserve the Iberian bat fauna, we encourage the urgent implementation of management plans to avoid intensive changes in land use both inside and around bat hotspots.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the important contribution of bat workers and SECEMU members to understanding the distributions of the bat fauna of Spain. We thank Ángeles Haz and Ana María Soria for correcting the English in the manuscript. FL was supported by a fellowship (Programa MECE Educación Superior, Project FRO 1555) from Ministerio de Educación of Gobierno de Chile and a postdoctoral fellowship (Programa de Formación de Investigadores Postdoctorales, Ord. N°001/VRIP) from Universidad de La Frontera, Chile. DS-F was supported by a post-doctoral contract funded by the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha and the European Social Fund (ESF). This project has been partially funded by project CGL2016-76995-P from Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad of Gobierno de España.

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Correspondence to Fulgencio Lisón.

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Communicated by Stephen Garnett.

This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Biodiversity protection and reserves.

Appendices

Appendix 1

List of bibliographic references used to complete the database of bats distribution in Spain (Alberdi et al. 2012; Alcalde et al. 2008; Alcalde 2009; Duarte and Farfán 2009; Encabo et al. 2007; Flaquer et al. 2010; García and Arbona 2009; Hermida et al. 2012; Lisón et al. 2010, 2011, 2012; Lisón 2012; Picazo and Lisón 2013; Serra-Cobo et al. 2007; Trujillo and García 2009).

Appendix 2

See Table 5.

Table 5 Number of cells recorded for each species (n) and its percentage for the 5429 cells of the study area

Appendix 3

See Fig. 4.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Hotspots for bat diversity outside of protected areas of Natura 2000 network

Appendix 4

See Fig. 5.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Maps with distribution of the cells from anthropization (a, b) and naturalization (c, d) rates in both periods (1986–2006 and 2006–2012). The colours represent the different quartiles and black lines delimit Spanish provinces. (Color figure online)

Appendix 5

See Fig. 6.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Hotspots and Roadless areas (>100 km2). (Color figure online)

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Lisón, F., Sánchez-Fernández, D. Low effectiveness of the Natura 2000 network in preventing land-use change in bat hotspots. Biodivers Conserv 26, 1989–2006 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-017-1342-8

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