¿Y ahora, quién podrá defendernos? The Inefficacy of Brazilian Conservation Areas in Safeguarding Bat Biodiversity

Abstract

Abstract There are several threats to bat biodiversity, including deforestation and habitat loss, mainly due to agriculture, farming and urbanization. These problems are aggravated by the lack of knowledge about biodiversity and its geographic distribution. Therefore, the objective of this work is to evaluate whether the current network of reserves in Brazil is adequate for the conservation of bat biodiversity and its ecosystem services. We used the occurrences of species present in digital databases, with 19 bioclimatic variables to build potential species distribution models. With the potential models we calculate the importance metrics, and overlap them with the current UC and TI in Brazil. We note that the UC and TI show that the areas located in the north of Brazil and in the southeastern coastal region are those that presented the highest values of importance for the conservation of the total biodiversity of bats. This same pattern was observed for the Frugivore, Total Insectivore and Non-Gleaner Insectivore guilds. For the measure of importance for each category in the IUCN of bats, we identified that the Southeast portion of Brazil represents high importance for conservation in the four threat levels present. For DD species, regions with a high degree of importance are concentrated throughout the northern and central regions of Brazil. For species classified as EM, the entire Brazilian region was classified as highly important for conservation and NT species have important areas in the coastal region of Brazil, extending inland across almost the entire Brazilian Cerrado. Our results highlight the ineffectiveness of areas designated for conservation in preserving terrestrial biodiversity, especially bats. They reinforce the need to plan conservation strategies based on conservation policies, reducing the probability of excluding species with restricted distribution or that occur in productive areas of high economic value.