Assessing the effectiveness of a national protected area network in maintaining carnivore populations

Protected areas (PAs) are essential to prevent further biodiversity loss yet their effectiveness varies largely with governance and external threats. Although methodological advances have permitted assessments of PA effectiveness in mitigating deforestation, we still lack similar studies for the impact of PAs on wildlife populations. Here we demonstrate the application ofuse an innovative combination of matching methods and hurdle-mixed models with a large-scale and long-term dataset of unprecedented coverage for Finland’s large carnivore species. We show that the national PA network , at the national level, PAs does not support higher densities than non-protected habitat for 3 of the 4 species investigated. For the brown bear, PAs appear to have lower densities than non-protected areas. For some species, PA effects interact with region or time, i.e. wolverine densities decreased inside PAs over the study period and lynx densities increased inside eastern PAs. Although we show that matc...

保护区（Protected Areas, PAs）是阻止生物多样性进一步丧失的关键所在，但其效能在很大程度上取决于治理模式与外部威胁因素。尽管方法学层面的进展已支持开展保护区减缓森林砍伐的效能评估，但针对保护区对野生动物种群影响的同类研究仍付阙如。本研究创新性地结合匹配法与障碍混合模型（hurdle-mixed models），并采用覆盖范围前所未有的大规模长期数据集，针对芬兰的大型食肉动物物种展开分析。我们的研究结果显示，在国家层面，在所调研的4个物种中，有3个物种的种群密度在保护区内并未高于非保护栖息地。而就棕熊而言，其在保护区内的种群密度反而低于非保护区域。部分物种的保护区效应会与区域或时间因素产生交互作用：例如在研究周期内，狼獾在保护区内的种群密度呈下降趋势，而东部保护区内的猞猁种群密度则有所上升。尽管本研究表明匹配法