Assessing conservation areas’ effectiveness in safeguarding ecosystem services (ES) and biodiversity is mandatory in a world under intense human pressure. We evaluate the effectiveness of protected areas (PA) and Indigenous lands (IL) to represent five ES and threatened species in the Brazilian Cerrado. We compared the magnitude of ES and biodiversity recorded in each PA and IL (observed values) with that captured by reserves located randomly across the Cerrado (random values). We found that 23.8% of PA and 32.8% of IL were highly effective (i.e. observed value ≥ 75% of the random values) in representing three or more ES. Regarding biodiversity, 42.2% and 40.3% of PA were highly effective in representing threatened plant and vertebrate species, respectively; while 13.1% and 63.9% of IL were highly effective in capturing these species. The entire PA network performed better than expected based on its area for water yield, sediment retention, and threatened species. Likewise, the IL network showed a disproportionately high amount of water yield, carbon storage, and threatened vertebrate species records considering its area. Our results provide evidence that PA and IL are essential for ensuring conservation in the region and call attention to the need to strengthen these reserves politically.

在一个巨大的人类压力下，必须评估保护区在保护生态系统服务（ES）和生物多样性方面的有效性。我们评估了保护区（PA）和土著土地（IL）代表巴西Cerrado中5个ES和受威胁物种的有效性。我们将记录在每个PA和IL中的ES和生物多样性的大小（观测值）与随机分布在整个Cerrado的保护区所捕获的ES（随机值）进行了比较。我们发现23.8％的PA和32.8％的IL在代表三个或更多ES方面非常有效（即观察值≥随机值的75％）。在生物多样性方面，PA的42.2％和40.3％在代表受威胁植物和脊椎动物物种方面非常有效；IL的13.1％和63.9％在捕获这些物种方面非常有效。整个PA网络的产水量，沉积物截留量和受威胁物种的表现要好于预期。同样，IL网络显示出高得多的水产量，碳存储量，并且考虑到其面积，濒临灭绝的脊椎动物物种记录也是如此。我们的研究结果证明，PA和IL对于确保该地区的保护至关重要，并提醒人们注意从政治上加强这些保护区的必要性。