Abstract

Interactions between deforestation, climate change, agricultural expansion and fire may drive the ecological system of the Amazon basin away from closed-canopy forest. Although protected areas are in place to reduce these impacts, they may be insufficient to ensure the long-term protection of biodiversity. This highlights the need to improve biodiversity protection beyond protected areas. This talk will discuss the results of the following research questions focussed on biodiversity conservation outside the protected area network: 1) How does the species richness of focal groups of mammals and birds vary in response to a gradient of landscape-scale deforestation and fragmentation? 2) Are there threshold effects of species loss (local extinction) at particular levels of landscape deforestation? Our analysis demonstrated the relevance of landscape-scale variables when defining the ways in which species react to deforestation and the importance of adopting a landscape-scale approach for designing successful conservation management strategies outside protected areas.