Biodiversity-friendly landscapes: A paradox for conservation?

Abstract

Human-induced global change may cause the sixth mass extinction of species. The moderate success of patch-scale biodiversity conservation measures has led to the concept of creating biodiversity-friendly landscapes. However, these landscapes potentially present a paradox: They may increase local biodiversity and thereby strengthen biotic resistance of native communities to global change winners, i.e., species that thrive under global change, such as invasive alien species or temperature- or nutrient-tolerant species. However, they may also improve landscape-scale habitat conditions, such as habitat connectivity, which facilitates the dispersal of global change winners, thereby accelerating biodiversity loss. Despite increasing investment in biodiversity-friendly landscapes, this paradox and underlying processes remain largely unquantified. We analyzed 2050 repeated, systematic vegetation surveys across the Swiss farmland and found the hypothesized facilitating and inhibitory effects on global change winners, but, overall, the inhibitory effects were stronger. This supports the call for a shift from patch-scale conservation to landscape-wide strategies to stop the ongoing decline of farmland biodiversity.