Protected area effectiveness in the Caucasus during socioeconomic and political shocks

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Massive biodiversity loss, from species to ecosystems, is a characteristic of the Anthropocene. A universal conservation tool to halt this trend is the establishment of protected areas, which aim at safeguarding ecosystem integrity and functioning, species diversity and ecosystem services. Despite marked advances in increase of protected area networks around the world, biodiversity and habitat losses due to human pressures continue to date. Therefore, the effectiveness of protected areas in delivering conservation goals is debatable, and understanding under which conditions protected areas function as envisioned is a key research topic. There is a range of confounding variables potentially affecting the performance of protected areas. However, socioeconomic and political conditions are dynamically and rapidly changing, and this might strongly determine the conservation outcomes of protected areas. Therefore, there is an urgent need to address overarching questions related to the effectiveness of protected areas, especially in the context of socioeconomic and political shocks. The protected areas in the southern Caucasus offer a unique natural experiment setting to answer these questions, as they have experienced different shocks and management approaches while sharing comparable ecosystems and species compositions. In this proposed research, we will apply an interdisciplinary approach, bridging top-down remote sensing methods to bottom-up wildlife monitoring and social survey techniques to measure multi-dimensional human pressures, and will assess the effectiveness of protected areas before, during and after the shocks. First, we will quantify the trends and spatial patterns of land conversion and livestock encroachment over time. Using satellite imagery and remote sensing in combination with telemetry of livestock, we will assess the spatiotemporal patterns of land-use change. Second, the spatial distribution of ungulate poaching in the protected areas over time will be quantified. For this purpose, focus group meetings with local communities and rangers’ logbook data on poaching incidents will help in estimation of poaching hotspots. Third, we will assess the role of protected areas in the alleviation of human pressures in the context of socioeconomic and political shocks. Finally, we will assess the effect size of protected areas on the habitat suitability of ungulate species considering human pressures and their synergies before, after and during the shocks.By assessing the effectiveness of protected areas in the southern Caucasus, this study will disentangle the otherwise complex effects of confounding factors such as socioeconomic and political shocks in global change processes, which is essential in devising conservation actions beyond the studied system. Our project results will also provide guidance for conservation and land use planning for the unique but endangered biodiversity of the southern Caucasus.