Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Matters Arising
  • Published:

Shifting baselines and biodiversity success stories

Nature volume 601, pages E17–E18 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Matters Arising to this article was published on 26 January 2022

The Original Article was published on 18 November 2020

arising from B. Leung et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2920-6 (2020)

Attempts to mitigate the biodiversity crisis require effective indicators on the state of nature, and the Living Planet Index1 (LPI) is an important tool for policy response and for communicating the importance of biodiversity declines to the general public. We welcome the recent analysis of Leung et al.2, who identified clusters in population trends between 1970 and the present from the LPI and illustrated that previously reported vertebrate declines are sensitive to a small percentage of declining populations. We agree that the disaggregation of indices such as the LPI can provide many useful insights1, but caution against the over-interpretation of stable or even increasing recent population trends as success stories, because for many vertebrate species, critical losses to populations happened before 1970 (the start date of the LPI). Shifting baselines for conservation success stories need to be confronted if we are to set biodiversity targets that meaningfully represent humans living in harmony with nature for the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Almond, R. E. A., Grooten, M. & Petersen, T. (eds) Living Planet Report 2020 – Bending the Curve of Biodiversity Loss (WWF, 2020).

  2. Leung, B. et al. Clustered versus catastrophic global vertebrate declines. Nature 588, 267–271 (2020).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Deinet, S. et al. Wildlife Comeback in Europe: The Recovery of Selected Mammal and Bird Species (final report to Rewilding Europe by ZSL, BirdLife International and the European Bird Census Council) (2013).

  4. Ceballos, G., Ehrlich, P. R. & Dirzo, R. Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 114, E6089–E6096 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Pauly, D. Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries. Trends Ecol. Evol. 10, 430 (1995).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Daskalova, G. N., Myers-Smith, I. H. & Godlee, J. L. Rare and common vertebrates span a wide spectrum of population trends. Nat. Commun. 11, 4394 (2020).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Setiawan, R. et al. Preventing global extinction of the Javan rhino: tsunami risk and future conservation direction. Conserv. Lett. 11, e12366 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Mondol, S., Bruford, M. W. & Ramakrishnan, U. Demographic loss, genetic structure and the conservation implications for Indian tigers. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 280, 20130496 (2013).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Milner-Gulland, E. J. & Beddington, J. R. The exploitation of elephants for the ivory trade: An historical perspective. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 252, 29–37 (1993).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Casas-Marce, M. et al. Spatiotemporal dynamics of genetic variation in the iberian lynx along its path to extinction reconstructed with ancient DNA. Mol. Biol. Evol. 34, 2893–2907 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Chase, M. J. et al. Continent-wide survey reveals massive decline in African savannah elephants. PeerJ 4, e2354 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Jhala, Y. V, Qureshi, Q. & Nayak, A. K. (eds) Status of Tigers, Co-Predators and Prey in India 2018. Summary Report (National Tiger Conservation Authority, Government of India, New Delhi & Wildlife Institute of India, 2019).

  13. Sanderson, E. W. et al. The ecological future of the North American bison: conceiving long-term, large-scale conservation of wildlife. Conserv. Biol. 22, 252–266 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado and the Environmental Studies Program, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Zia Mehrabi

  2. Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Columbia, Canada

    Robin Naidoo

  3. WWF-US, Washington, DC, USA

    Robin Naidoo

Authors
  1. Zia Mehrabi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Robin Naidoo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Z.M. and R.N. contributed equally to this work.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zia Mehrabi or Robin Naidoo.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Mehrabi, Z., Naidoo, R. Shifting baselines and biodiversity success stories. Nature 601, E17–E18 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03750-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03750-6

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Anthropocene

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Anthropocene