Proactive conservation to prevent habitat losses to agricultural expansion

The projected loss of millions of square kilometres of natural ecosystems
to meet future demand for food, animal feed, fibre, and bioenergy crops is
likely to massively escalate threats to biodiversity. Reducing these
threats requires a detailed knowledge of how and where they are likely to
be most severe. We developed a geographically explicit model of future
agricultural land clearance based on observed historic changes and combine
the outputs with species-specific habitat preferences for 19,859 species
of terrestrial vertebrates. We project that 87.7% of these species will
lose habitat to agricultural expansion by 2050, with 1,280 species
projected to lose ≥25% of their habitat. Proactive policies targeting how,
where, and what food is produced could reduce these threats, with a
combination of approaches potentially preventing almost all these losses
while contributing to healthier human diets. As international biodiversity
targets are set to be updated in 2021, these results highlight the
importance of proactive efforts to safeguard biodiversity by reducing
demand for agricultural land.