Frontiers for conservation: targeting European borders as conservation areas.

It is widely known that political borders should not hamper wildlife. Conservation actions involving several countries are perceived to bring large-scale benefits to nature while helping to resolve social and political conflicts. While many neighbouring countries have lived peacefully for a considerably long time, namely the western European countries, several eastern countries were isolated from the western regions due to the so-called “iron curtain”. More recently, in the former Yugoslavia and currently along the border of Ukraine-Russia, devastating conflicts are also isolating regions and countries. On the other hand, human developments, and particularly transportation networks, are severely threatening biodiversity. For example, roads inflict severe mortality rates due to animal-vehicle collisions, can obstruct the animal movement, or represent essential pathways for the spread of invasive species. It is common for conflict zones to have a lower density of roads and populations. We suggest that former isolation and conflict areas should be recognised as opportunities for biodiversity conservation to strengthen crosscountry relations. In fact, border areas can become important areas for conservation due to higher habitat quality, namely forest cover and reduced density of infrastructures. The German Green Belt project is an excellent example of this. We provide an assessment of the potential for European political borders to function as fundamental conservation and connectivity areas by evaluating and comparing the number and size of roadless areas, distribution of top predator species and human appropriation of net primary productivity within countries and along their borders. We detected several opportunities that could be taken into account to improve our network of protected areas. For example, borders of eastern countries have a significantly higher cover of roadless areas, from Belarus down to Croatia and Greece. We further discuss how focusing on conservation action at borders can form a ‘win-win’ situation with advantages for both biodiversity and human peace. Conservation of flag species such as bear and lynx at borders of main geopolitical blocks can be used to increase the cooperation between such regions and with that ensure a long-lasting peaceful coexistence.

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Ascensão F. D’Amico M. Barrientos R. Revilla E. y Pereira H.M. Frontiers for conservation: targeting European borders as conservation areas. Infrastructure & Ecology Network Europe, 2018.

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Resource type Text
Date of creation 2024-12-02
Date of last revision 2025-01-23
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Metadata identifier 78bba418-facd-5399-bfb0-d5d3df9ee133
Metadata language Spanish
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ISO 19115 topic category biota
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Name of the dataset creator Ascensão, F., D’Amico, M., Barrientos, R., Revilla, E. y Pereira, H.M.
Name of the dataset editor Infrastructure & Ecology Network Europe
Other identifier ISBN: 978-91-639-8714-4
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