Protected area as indicator of ecological sustainability? A century of development in Europe’s boreal forest Marine Elbakidze, Per Angelstam, Nikolay Sobolev, Erik Degerman, Kjell Andersson, Robert Axelsson, Olle Höjer, Sandra Wennberg Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Boreal forests: why?  The second largest biome in the world ( ̴ 33% of all forests globally)  Global importance for mitigation and adaptation to climate change  An opportunity for conservation with high ambition levels, including ecological integrity and resilience

Aim To analyze and compare the development over time of formally PAs as an indicator of ecological sustainability in Europe’s boreal forest regions and countries

Boreal forests in Europe Bohn et al. 2004

Collected data  On terrestrial and inland water areas that were or are formally protected since the 1900th  The database includes: - name of a PA - national designation to a particular category - location (northern, middle or southern boreal forests) - size (in ha) - year of designation - year of conversion of a PA to other type of PA or unprotected area - IUCN management category  Identified a total of PAs

Results 1. Results 1. Protected areas over time in Europe’s boreal forest

Results  The total PA in Europe’s boreal forest increased steadily from the 1900th to the 2010th  However, there was considerable variation in dynamics among different decades and northern, middle and southern boreal forests  During eight decades out of ten the main growth in the total area of PAs took place in the northern boreal forest

Results  Strict nature reserves (I) and national parks (II) were the main categories of PAs’ during the first four decades  Their area proportion sharply declined in the 1960s  The current ‘set’ of PA categories was established in the 1970s  The area proportions for current PAs’ management categories have been relatively stable since the 1990s

Results 2. Comaprisson among the countries

Total area proportion (%) of PAsAverage annual change (%) of total area CountryIn 1909In 1950In to to 2010 NorwayNorthern < Middle Southern < SwedenNorthern Middle < Southern < FinlandNorthern Middle Southern RussiaNorthern Middle Southern The annual change (in %) of the increase of total proportion of PAs in the boreal forests

Results The median size of PA:  124 ha in Russia  64 ha in Sweden  48 ha in Norway  10 ha in Finland

Conclusions  The existing PAs shows a poor representativity among the northern, middle and southern boreal forests since the beginning of 20th century.  As a result, by the end of 2010 the area proportion of PAs was 10.8% of the total boreal forest area in Europe with 17.2% of the total area of northern, 7.9% of the middle and 8.7% of the southern boreal forests.

Conclusions  The uneven representativity of PAs in Europe’s boreal biome and each country that was maintained during almost the entire century has been and is a big challenge for boreal biodiversity conservation today  Another challenge: the vast majority of boreal PAs are small in size, with the smallest areas in the southern boreal forest  The area proportion of protection is an important indicator for conservation efforts; however, it does not necessarily mean that PA networks are in place in terms of providing functional habitat networks for different ecosystems, or for ecological sustainability.