Designated critical habitats for U.S. imperiled species are not protected from climate and land-use change

Abstract

Designation of critical habitat is an important conservation tool for species listed as threatened or endangered under the United States (U.S.) Endangered Species Act (ESA). While this is an important protective mechanism, lands designated as critical habitat could still be subject to degradation and fragmentation if they are not also in a protected status that prioritizes biodiversity conservation. Additionally, most designations of critical habitat do not explicitly take climate change into account. The objective of our study was to determine whether and to what extent critical habitats for species listed under the ESA are located within protected areas and areas previously identified as climate refugia or climate corridors, to inform management strategies to better conserve and recover these species. We mapped the designated critical habitats of 153 ESA-listed species and measured their overlap with previously-identified areas of climate refugia and corridors (CRC), and also with lands designated as nature-protected by U.S. Geological Survey’s Gap Analysis Project (GAP Status 1 or 2) and working lands with wildlife habitat potential (GAP Status 3). Only 18 % of all designated critical habitat is located on lands that are both in CRC and nature-protected, and only 9 % of species had over half of their designated critical habitats in such lands. 84 % of species had <25 % overlap of their critical habitats with these areas. Critical habitats may therefore not fulfill their essential role of helping imperiled species persist and recover.

Keywords

Endangered Species Act / Critical habitat / Climate refugia / Climate corridors / Protected areas / Biodiversity conservation

Data availability

Data is archived on Open Science Framework and available at: https://osf.io/eph7r/.

Artificial intelligence

The authors declare that no Generative AI or AI-assisted technologies were used in the writing process.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Aimee Delach: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Project administration, Methodology, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Laura A. Nunes: Visualization, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Alex Borowicz: Visualization, Formal analysis. Theodore C. Weber: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Formal analysis, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We thank Andrew Carter, Alison Gainsbury, Lauren McCain, Talia Niederman, Lindsay Rosa and Vera Smith for assistance with the development of this project and feedback on the manuscript. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2024.06.001.

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