Socio-ecological gap analysis to forecast species range contractions for conservation

Conservation requires both a needs assessment and prioritization scheme
for planning and implementation. Range maps are critical for understanding
and conserving biodiversity, but current range maps often omit content,
negating important metrics of variation in populations and places. Here,
we integrate a myriad of conditions that are spatially explicit across
distributions of carnivores to identify gaps in capacity necessary for
their conservation. Expanding on traditional gap analyses that focus
almost exclusively on quantifying discordance in protected area coverage
across a species’ range, our work aggregates threat layers (e.g., drought,
human pressures) with resources layers (e.g., protected areas, cultural
diversity) to identify gaps in available conservation capacity (ACC)
across ranges for 91 African carnivores. Our model indicated that all
species have some portion of their range at risk of contraction, with an
average of 15 percentage range loss. We found that the ACC differed based
on body size and taxonomy. Results deviated from current perceptions of
extinction risks for species with an International Union for Conservation
of Nature (IUCN) threat status of Least Concern and yielded insights for
species categorized as Data Deficient. Our socio-ecological gap analysis
presents a geospatial approach to inform decision-making and resource
allocation in conservation. Ultimately, our work advances forecasting
dynamics of species’ ranges that are increasingly vital in an era of great
socio-ecological change to mitigate human–wildlife conflict and promote
inclusive carnivore conservation across geographies.