Biodiversity Climate change Conservation planning Freshwater

Proactive conservation is essential - but not sufficient: why biodiversity still needs species-specific protections

Johnson, C. & Ray, J.

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Key points

• Species-specific protections are critical safety nets for hundreds of Canadian species with very small populations or highly restricted ranges, and address threats like invasive species, disease, overexploitation, and climate-driven changes, which cannot be tackled directly or quickly by area-based conservation alone.
• Beyond safeguarding species on the brink, a focus on individual species can galvanize public support in times of crisis, serve as barometers of ecosystem change, and act as practical management tools that point the way to broader conservation goals.
• In most provinces and territories, species-at-risk legislation is absent or inadequate. Eliminating single-species protections in these contexts would deepen gaps and accelerate biodiversity loss.
• Protecting biodiversity at large ultimately requires managing ecosystems on a large enough scale—through protected areas and by addressing development pressures and cumulative impacts—while also combining this with targeted species-level actions to prevent extinctions and create conditions for long-term resilience.

Abstract

Single-species conservation is often criticised as costly, inefficient, biased, and ineffective. Yet, these reactive conservation approaches are important for addressing the needs of species that have not been adequately safeguarded through broader conservation measures. Drawing on conservation data from Canada, we demonstrate that many Threatened or Endangered species are at risk due to extremely limited distributions or small population sizes. While many of these species would benefit from habitat protections, they likely require additional focused actions (e.g., captive breeding, translocation, management of predation, or competition) to increase their likelihood of persistence. We also show that key threats, including biological resource use, pollution, climate change, and invasive species, are not addressed with habitat protections alone. We argue that single-species conservation remains essential for addressing non-habitat threats and for empowering direct recovery actions for species that are nearing extinction or extirpation. Proactive, area-, and ecosystem-based approaches are essential for conserving biodiversity but are not a universal solution for the challenges facing many at-risk species. Conservation professionals must address the limitations but continue to recognise the necessity of single-species protections and recovery actions.

Recommended citation

Johnson, C. & Ray, J. (2025). Proactive conservation is essential - but not sufficient: why biodiversity still needs species-specific protections. Facets. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2025-0111