Shifting agriculture is the dominant driver of forest disturbance in threatened forest species’ ranges

Abstract

Forest disturbance, including deforestation, is a major driver of global biodiversity decline. Identifying the underlying socioeconomic drivers can help guide interventions to halt biodiversity decline. Here, we quantified spatial overlaps between the distributions of 6164 globally threatened terrestrial vertebrate species and five major forest disturbance drivers at the global scale: commodity-driven deforestation, shifting agriculture, forestry, wildfire, and urbanization. We find that each driver has a distinct relative importance among species groups and geographic regions with, for example, the dominant disturbance drivers being forestry in northern regions and shifting agriculture in the tropics. Overall, shifting agriculture was more prevalent within threatened forest species’ ranges in the tropics, and some temperate nations. Our findings suggest that, globally, threatened forest species are exposed to a disproportional decrease in habitat area. Combining forest disturbance maps and species ranges can help evaluate agricultural landscape management and prioritize conservation efforts to reduce further biodiversity loss.