Data for: High focus on threatened species and habitats may undermine biodiversity conservation: evidence from the northern Baltic Sea

Conservation policies and environmental impact assessments commonly target threatened species and habitats. Nevertheless, macroecological research provides reasons why also common species should be considered. We investigate the consequences of focusing solely on legally protected species and habitats in a spatial conservation planning context using a comprehensive, benthic marine dataset from the northern Baltic Sea. Using spatial prioritization and surrogacy analysis, we show that the common approach in conservation planning, where legally listed threatened species and habitats are the focus of conservation efforts, could lead to poor outcomes for common species (and therefore biodiversity as a whole), allowing them to decline in the future.  If conservation efforts were aimed solely at threatened species, common species would experience a loss of 62% coverage. In contrast, if conservation plans were based only on common species, threatened species would suffer a loss of 1%. Threatene..., ,