Can Protected Areas buffer invasions?

Protected areas (PAs) provide native biodiversity and habitats a refuge against the impacts of global change, particularly acting as natural filters against biological invasions. In practice, however, it is unknown how effective PAs will be in shielding native species from invasions under projected climate change. Here, we investigated the current and future potential distributions of 100 of the most invasive terrestrial, freshwater, and marine species in Europe. We found that range expansion prevails over contraction for several taxonomic groups, environments, future scenarios, and life-history strategies of invasive species, but that PAs are strategically well placed to help mitigate impacts (Gallardo et al. 2017): PAs designated before 1950s have no records of Europe’s worst 100 invasive species, with increasing levels of invasion in PAs designated after 1980s.

This paper is one of the most important achievements of my professional career because: 1/ I conducted the research in the framework of two proyects that I led as Principal Investigator, funded by Fundación Iberdrola and Plan Nacional de I+D+I, respectively. 2/ The novelty of the approach, focusing in the role of PAs to buffer the expansion of invasive species at continental scales, a reasonable hypothesis not yet empirically tested. 3/ The unprecedented magnitude of the statistical analyses undertook, which go far beyond ordinary modelling studies by integrating multiple species (100 species, 1.15 million occurrence records), environments (terrestrial, freshwater and marine), >22.000 protected areas at the scale of a whole continent, exceptional high resolution of predictors (1km2), and multiple future scenarios (12 for the continent and 5 for the marine environment). 4/ It was published in a high impact journal (IF= 8.99, top 10% in Ecology, ranking first journal in Biodiversity Conservation), and was featured as Research Highlight by the journal Nature (“Nature reserves shield native species from invaders”, 08/08/2017).

Cumulative number of invasive species and the most vulnerable native species to their colonization in PAs designated in the last hundred years. Bars represent the cumulative area protected over time. Extracted from Gallardo et al. (2017).

This paper has given me the unique opportunity to coordinate an exceptional team of researchers, including, among others, some of the world’s top-researchers on biological invasions (Montserrat Vilà from EBD-CSIC, Petr Pysek from the Czech Academy of Sciences) and ecological modelling (Wilfried Thuiller from U. of Grenoble, Chris Yesson from London Zoological Society) with whom I expect to keep collaborating in the future. After this publication, I was invited to take part in a IUCN special interest group focused on the impacts of invasive species in protected areas, a topic of great releavance after the IUCN revealed invasive species are the first threat to conservation in World Heritage Sites. In the framework of this work I supervised an undergraduate student (MªVictoria Ferrer, “Especies Exóticas Invasoras en los Parques Nacionales Españoles: evaluación, tendencias y propuestas de actuación”, U. Zaragoza). This pilot study is the base of a project that I led as Principal Investigator in 2018, funded by Fundación Biodiversidad, which evaluated the current level of invasion and future trends in the 15 Spanish National Parks (“Cambio Climático y Especies Exóticas Invasoras en la Red de Parques Nacionales: diagnóstico, adaptación y gobernanza”).