The Albertine Rift region of Africa is one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet, with more threatened and endemic vertebrates than elsewhere on the continent. Many of the endemic species are confined to montane forest or alpine areas. We assessed impacts of loss of habitat to agriculture and predicted impacts from niche modelling of climate change to the endemic species of the Albertine Rift. Modelling species distributions for 162 endemic terrestrial vertebrates and plants, we estimated the average percentage of habitat already lost to agriculture at 38% across all species. However, of the remaining suitable habitat the average percentage protected is currently 46%, greatly increased by the recent establishment of Itombwe, Kabobo and Ngandja Reserves in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo from 30%. Species ranges in 2080 were estimated using climate models and predicted to lead to an average loss of an additional 75% of remaining suitable habitat across all species. An estimated 34 endemic species were predicted to lose >90% of their current remaining suitable habitat. The percentage of the total suitable habitat protected in parks or reserves increases under future climate change to 56% because as ranges contract more of the remaining area occurs within existing protected areas. This indicates that the protected area coverage is reasonably well located for future climate change. Based on these data we estimate that 46% of the endemic species we assessed would qualify for threatened status on the global Red List.

中文翻译：

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未来气候变化下阿尔伯丁裂谷特有物种的保护

非洲的艾伯丁裂谷地区是地球上生物多样性最丰富的地区之一，这里的受威胁和特有脊椎动物比非洲大陆其他地方更多。许多特有物种仅限于山地森林或高山地区。我们评估了栖息地丧失对农业的影响，并预测了气候变化的生态位模型对阿尔伯丁裂谷特有物种的影响。通过对 162 种特有陆生脊椎动物和植物的物种分布进行建模，我们估计所有物种因农业而丧失的栖息地的平均百分比为 38%。然而，在剩余的适宜栖息地中，目前受保护的平均百分比为 46%，由于最近在刚果民主共和国东部建立了 Itombwe、Kabobo 和 Ngandja 保护区，这一比例大大提高，这一比例为 30%。使用气候模型对 2080 年的物种分布范围进行了估计，并预测这将导致所有物种剩余的适宜栖息地平均额外损失 75%。据估计，34 种特有物种将失去其当前剩余适宜栖息地的 90% 以上。在未来的气候变化下，公园或保护区内受保护的适宜栖息地总数的百分比将增加到 56%，因为随着范围的缩小，更多的剩余区域出现在现有的保护区内。这表明保护区的覆盖范围对于未来的气候变化来说处于相当好的位置。根据这些数据，我们估计我们评估的 46% 的特有物种符合全球红色名录上的受威胁状态。