Abstract
In a recent article on "The uncertain future of protected lands and waters", Golden Kroner et al. (2019) suggest that legal changes that temper the regulations in protected areas (PAs) are one of the main threats to biodiversity conservation. By examining Protected Area Downgrading (i.e. relaxing restrictions), Downsizing (i.e. shrinking boundaries) and Degazettement (i.e. complete loss of protection) (in total referred to as PADDD) over the last 126 years, they assessed the factors leading to PADDD events and discuss their consequences for the conservation of PAs in the United States and Amazonian countries.
They conclude that most PADDD events were associated with industrial-scale resource extraction and local land pressure and land claims. To mitigate these trends, they recommend increasing research efforts to support evidence-based conservation policies to address the challenges of PADDD.
However, they overlook one of the largest threats to conservation and PAs in particular - biological invasions (Foxcroft et al. 2013, 2017). Potentially, invasive alien species (IAS) could be a primary cause of enacting a PADDD event (e.g. relaxing restrictions due to IAS-induced habitat transformation).
Additionally, while some of the causes of PADDD events stated in the paper centre on conservation planning, forestry, industrial agriculture and mining, IAS can be directly or indirectly associated with all of these. Here, we argue that overlooking the problems associated with IAS in PAs can hinder conservation actions, create biases in the prioritisation of natural resource management and generate false or distorted perceptions for the public.