Protected areas are a principal conservation tool for addressing biodiversity loss. Such protection is especially needed in freshwaters, given their greater biodiversity losses compared to terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, broad-scale evaluations of protected area effectiveness for freshwater biodiversity are lacking. Here, we provide a continental-scale analysis of the relationship between protected areas and freshwater biodiversity using 1,754 river invertebrate community time series sampled between 1986 and 2022 across ten European countries. Protected areas primarily benefited poor-quality communities (indicative of higher human impacts) that were protected, or that gained protection, across a substantial proportion of their upstream catchment. Protection had little to no influence on moderate- and high-quality communities, although high-quality communities potentially provide less scope for effect. Our results reveal the overall limited effectiveness of current protected areas for freshwater biodiversity, likely because they are typically designed and managed to achieve terrestrial conservation goals. Broadly improving effectiveness for freshwater biodiversity requires catchment-scale management approaches involving larger and more continuous upstream protection, and efforts to address remaining stressors. These approaches would also benefit connected terrestrial and coastal ecosystems, thus generally helping bend the curve of global biodiversity loss.

Department of Animal Sciences and Aquatic Ecology Ghent University Ghent Belgium

Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Uppsala Sweden

Department of Botany and Zoology Faculty of Science Masaryk University Brno Czech Republic

Department of Ecoscience Aarhus University Aarhus Denmark

Department of Forest Ecology and Management Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences Umeå Sweden

Department of Hydrobiology University of Pécs Pécs Hungary

Department of Plant Biology and Ecology University of the Basque Country Leioa Bilbao Spain

Department of River Ecology and Conservation Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt Gelnhausen Germany

Department of Tisza Research Institute of Aquatic Ecology HUN REN Centre for Ecological Research Debrecen Hungary

Division of Biology Kansas State University Manhattan KS USA

Ecology and Genetics Research Unit University of Oulu Oulu Finland

Faculty of Biology University of Duisburg Essen Essen Germany

Flanders Environment Agency Aalst Belgium

Freshwater and Marine Solutions Finnish Environment Institute Oulu Finland

HUN REN Balaton Limnological Research Institute Tihany Hungary

IFREMER DYNECO LEBCO Centre de Bretagne Plouzané France

IHCantabria Instituto de Hidráulica Ambiental de la Universidad de Cantabria Santander Spain

INRAE UR RiverLy centre de Lyon Villeurbanne Villeurbanne Cedex France

Institute of Aquatic Ecology HUN REN Centre for Ecological Research Budapest Hungary

Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries Berlin Germany

Nature Solutions Finnish Environment Institute Oulu Finland

Oulanka Research Station University of Oulu Infrastructure Platform Kuusamo Finland

Research Center One Health Ruhr University Alliance Ruhr and Faculty for Biology University of Duisburg Essen Essen Germany

School of Life Sciences University of Essex Colchester UK

School of Science and Technology Nottingham Trent University Nottingham UK

SHE2 Research Group FEHM Lab CSIC Barcelona Spain

State Scientific Research Institute Nature Research Centre Vilnius Lithuania

University of Paris Saclay INRAE UR HYCAR Antony France

Water Energy and Environmental Engineering Research Unit Faculty of Technology University of Oulu Oulu Finland

Zobrazit více v PubMed

Ceballos, G. et al. Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: entering the sixth mass extinction. PubMed DOI PMC

Cowie, R. H., Bouchet, P. & Fontaine, B. The Sixth Mass Extinction: fact, fiction or speculation?. PubMed DOI PMC

Sayer, C. A. et al. One-quarter of freshwater fauna threatened with extinction. PubMed DOI PMC

CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity).

Geldmann, J. et al. A global analysis of management capacity and ecological outcomes in terrestrial protected areas. DOI

Langhammer, P. F. et al. The positive impact of conservation action. PubMed DOI

Gray, C. L. et al. Local biodiversity is higher inside than outside terrestrial protected areas worldwide. PubMed DOI PMC

Sciberras, M. et al. Evaluating the relative conservation value of fully and partially protected marine areas. DOI

Li, G. et al. Mixed effectiveness of global protected areas in resisting habitat loss. PubMed DOI PMC

Leberger, R., Rosa, I. M. D., Guerra, C. A., Wolf, F. & Pereira, H. M. Global patterns of forest loss across IUCN categories of protected areas. DOI

Tickner, D. et al. Bending the curve of global freshwater biodiversity loss: an emergency recovery plan. PubMed DOI PMC

Albert, J. S. et al. Scientists’ warning to humanity on the freshwater biodiversity crisis. PubMed DOI PMC

Dudgeon, D. & Strayer, D. L. Bending the curve of global freshwater biodiversity loss: what are the prospects?. PubMed DOI PMC

Acreman, M., Hughes, K. A., Arthington, A. H., Tickner, D. & Dueñas, M.-A. Protected areas and freshwater biodiversity: a novel systematic review distils eight lessons for effective conservation. DOI

Koning, A. A., Perales, K. M., Fluet-Chouinard, E. & McIntyre, P. B. A network of grassroots reserves protects tropical river fish diversity. PubMed DOI

Valentim, H. I. L., Feio, M. J. & Almeida, S. F. P. Assessing the effectiveness of terrestrial protected areas towards riverine ecosystems. PubMed DOI

Chessman, B. C. Do protected areas benefit freshwater species? A broad-scale assessment for fish in Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin. DOI

Nogueira, J. G., Teixeira, A., Varandas, S., Lopes-Lima, M. & Sousa, R. Assessment of a terrestrial protected area for the conservation of freshwater biodiversity. DOI

Gavioli, A., Filipe, A. F., Patonai, K., Milardi, M. & Castaldelli, G. Effectiveness of the Natura 2000 network for freshwater fish conservation in a Mediterranean region.

Herbert, M. E., Mcintyre, P. B., Doran, P. J., Allan, J. D. & Abell, R. Terrestrial reserve networks do not adequately represent aquatic ecosystems. PubMed DOI

Delso, Á, Fajardo, J. & Muñoz, J. Protected area networks do not represent unseen biodiversity. PubMed DOI PMC

Abell, R., Allan, J. D. & Lehner, B. Unlocking the potential of protected areas for freshwaters. DOI

Juffe-Bignoli, D. et al. Achieving Aichi Biodiversity Target 11 to improve the performance of protected areas and conserve freshwater biodiversity. DOI

Gonçalves, D. V. & Hermoso, V. Global goals overlook freshwater conservation. PubMed DOI

Protected Planet. Protected planet: the world database on protected areas (WDPA) and world database on other effective area-based conservation measures (WD-OECM). www.protectedplanet.net (2023).

Burgers, H. E., Schipper, A. M. & Jan Hendriks, A. Size relationships of water discharge in rivers: scaling of discharge with catchment area, main-stem length and precipitation. DOI

Lorenz, A. W. & Feld, C. K. Upstream river morphology and riparian land use overrule local restoration effects on ecological status assessment. DOI

Stoll, S., Breyer, P., Tonkin, J. D., Früh, D. & Haase, P. Scale-dependent effects of river habitat quality on benthic invertebrate communities — implications for stream restoration practice. PubMed DOI

Zhang, W., Swaney, D. P., Hong, B. & Howarth, R. W. Anthropogenic phosphorus inputs to a river basin and their impacts on phosphorus fluxes along its upstream-downstream continuum. DOI

Pringle, C. M. Hydrologic connectivity and the management of biological reserves: a global perspective. DOI

Mancini, L. et al. Biological quality of running waters in protected areas: the influence of size and land use. DOI

Darwall, W. R. T. et al. Implications of bias in conservation research and investment for freshwater species. DOI

Hermoso, V., Filipe, A. F., Segurado, P. & Beja, P. Filling gaps in a large reserve network to address freshwater conservation needs. PubMed DOI

Grantham, T. E. et al. Missing the boat on freshwater fish conservation in California. DOI

Coetzee, B. W. T., Gaston, K. J. & Chown, S. L. Local scale comparisons of biodiversity as a test for global protected area ecological performance: a meta-analysis. PubMed DOI PMC

Cazalis, V., Belghali, S. & Rodrigues, A. S. L. Using a large-scale biodiversity monitoring dataset to test the effectiveness of protected areas at conserving North-American breeding birds. DOI

Joppa, L. N. & Pfaff, A. High and far: biases in the location of protected areas. PubMed DOI PMC

Venter, O. et al. Bias in protected-area location and its effects on long-term aspirations of biodiversity conventions. PubMed DOI

Rodrigues, A. S. L. & Cazalis, V. The multifaceted challenge of evaluating protected area effectiveness. PubMed DOI PMC

Macadam, C. R. & Stockan, J. A. More than just fish food: ecosystem services provided by freshwater insects. DOI

Bonada, N., Prat, N., Resh, V. H. & Statzner, B. Developments in aquatic insect biomonitoring: a comparative analysis of recent approaches. PubMed DOI

Sinclair, J. S. et al. Multi-decadal improvements in the ecological quality of European rivers are not consistently reflected in biodiversity metrics. PubMed DOI

Carter, J. L., Resh, V. H. & Hannaford, M. J. Macroinvertebrates as biotic indicators of environmental quality. In

Santangeli, A. et al. Mixed effects of a national protected area network on terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity. PubMed DOI PMC

Jaureguiberry, P. et al. The direct drivers of recent global anthropogenic biodiversity loss. PubMed DOI PMC

Jones, K. R. et al. One-third of global protected land is under intense human pressure. PubMed DOI

Harrison, I. J. et al. Protected areas and freshwater provisioning: a global assessment of freshwater provision, threats and management strategies to support human water security. DOI

Staponites, L. R., Simon, O. P., Barták, V. & Bílý, M. Management effectiveness in a freshwater protected area: long-term water quality response to catchment-scale land use changes. DOI

Haase, P. et al. The recovery of European freshwater biodiversity has come to a halt. PubMed DOI PMC

Leal, C. G. et al. Integrated terrestrial-freshwater planning doubles conservation of tropical aquatic species. PubMed DOI

Wolfram, J., Stehle, S., Bub, S., Petschick, L. L. & Schulz, R. Water quality and ecological risks in European surface waters – monitoring improves while water quality decreases. PubMed DOI

Hurlbert, S. H. The nonconcept of species diversity: a critique and alternative parameters. PubMed DOI

Hillebrand, H. et al. Biodiversity change is uncoupled from species richness trends: consequences for conservation and monitoring. DOI

Violle, C. et al. Functional rarity: the ecology of outliers. PubMed DOI PMC

Dee, L. E. et al. When do ecosystem services depend on rare species?. PubMed DOI

Cid, N. et al. From meta-system theory to the sustainable management of rivers in the Anthropocene. PubMed DOI PMC

Nel, J. L., Reyers, B., Roux, D. J. & Cowling, R. M. Expanding protected areas beyond their terrestrial comfort zone: identifying spatial options for river conservation. DOI

Guan, Z., Elleason, M., Goodale, E. & Mammides, C. Global patterns and potential drivers of human settlements within protected areas. DOI

Elleason, M. et al. Strictly protected areas are not necessarily more effective than areas in which multiple human uses are permitted. PubMed DOI PMC

Geldmann, J., Manica, A., Burgess, N. D., Coad, L. & Balmford, A. A global-level assessment of the effectiveness of protected areas at resisting anthropogenic pressures. PubMed DOI PMC

Cañedo-Argüelles, M., Hermoso, V., Herrera-Grao, T., Barquín, J. & Bonada, N. Freshwater conservation planning informed and validated by public participation: the Ebro catchment, Spain, as a case study. DOI

Haubrock, P. J. et al. A holistic catchment-scale framework to guide flood and drought mitigation towards improved biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing. DOI

Schindler, D. E. & Smits, A. P. Subsidies of aquatic resources in terrestrial ecosystems. DOI

Broadley, A., Stewart-Koster, B., Burford, M. A. & Brown, C. J. A global review of the critical link between river flows and productivity in marine fisheries. DOI

Heino, J. & Soininen, J. Are higher taxa adequate surrogates for species-level assemblage patterns and species richness in stream organisms?. DOI

Qu, Y. et al. Significant improvement in freshwater invertebrate biodiversity in all types of English rivers over the past 30 years. PubMed DOI

Birk, S. et al. Three hundred ways to assess Europe’s surface waters: an almost complete overview of biological methods to implement the Water Framework Directive. DOI

Pinheiro, J., Bates, D. & R Core Team. nlme: Linear and nonlinear mixed effects models https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=nlme (2023).

R. Core Team.

Visconti, P. et al. Effects of errors and gaps in spatial data sets on assessment of conservation progress. PubMed DOI

Palliwoda, J., Büermann, A., Fischer, J., Kraemer, R. & Schröter, M. Zoning of UNESCO biosphere reserves: a comprehensive set of geodata for Europe.

Amatulli, G. et al. Hydrography90m: a new high-resolution global hydrographic dataset. DOI

Schürz, M. et al. hydrographr: Scalable hydrographic data processing in R. https://glowabio.github.io/hydrographr/ (2023).

Downing, J. A. et al. Global abundance and size distribution of streams and rivers. DOI

Sliva, L. & Williams, D. D. Buffer zone versus whole catchment approaches to studying land use impact on river water quality. PubMed DOI

Li, S., Gu, S., Tan, X. & Zhang, Q. Water quality in the upper Han River basin, China: the impacts of land use/land cover in riparian buffer zone. PubMed DOI

Nava-López, M. Z., Diemont, S. A. W., Hall, M. & Ávila-Akerberg, V. Riparian buffer zone and whole watershed influences on river water quality: implications for ecosystem services near megacities. DOI

Nardi, F., Vivoni, E. R. & Grimaldi, S. Investigating a floodplain scaling relation using a hydrogeomorphic delineation method. DOI

Lewis, E. et al. Dynamics in the global protected-area estate since 2004. PubMed DOI

Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. & Walker, S. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. DOI

Zuur, A., Ieno, E. N., Walker, N., Saveliev, A. A. & Smith, G. M.

Benjamini, Y. & Hochberg, Y. Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. DOI

Wood, S. N.