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.

Datos y Recursos

Cite como

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.

Clipboard Icon
Recuperado: 06 Nov 2025 17:19:33

Metadatos
Descargar
DCAT-AP/NTI-RISP

Información básica
Tipo de recurso Texto
Fecha de creación 23-05-2025
Fecha de última modificación 23-05-2025
Mostrar histórico de cambios
Identificador de los metadatos 78bba418-facd-5399-bfb0-d5d3df9ee133
Idioma de los metadatos Español
Temáticas (NTI-RISP)
Categoría del conjunto de alto valor (HVD)
Categoría temática ISO 19115 biota
URI de palabras clave
Información bibliográfica
Nombre del autor Ascensão, F., D’Amico, M., Barrientos, R., Revilla, E. y Pereira, H.M.
Nombre del editor Infrastructure & Ecology Network Europe
Identificador alternativo ISBN: 978-91-639-8714-4
Identificador del autor
Email del autor
Web del autor
Procedencia
Declaración de linaje
Perfil de Metadatos
Notas sobre la versión
Versión