Global efforts to preserve habitat and the planet's most endangered species urgently need to be stepped up, according to a new report from Map of Life, the flagship initiative of the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change.
Overall, protected area networks grew over the past year, but delivered only selective successes for the protection of terrestrial vertebrates and trees, the report found.
Created in 2012, the Yale center monitors global species populations and offers conservation guidance.
While advances in protections of oceans were somewhat promising, the lack of significant progress in protecting land-based systems was concerning, said Walter Jetz, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and director of the center.
Many species and their habitats remain inadequately protected, and newly protected areas will only be able to support biodiversity conservation if those areas are strategically placed to protect fragile habitats, said Alex Killion, the Yale center's managing director.
The release of the 2026 report coincides with the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity taking place in Yerevan, Armenia, on Oct. 19-30.
"As nations meet in Armenia to discuss the UN Biodiversity Goals, our report delivers a somewhat sobering update," Jetz said. "Almost half of assessed species remain highly insufficiently protected, and conservation gaps are particularly large for already threatened species."
Launched 16 years ago, Map of Life reports on global status and biodiversity protection trends through the Species Protection Index (SPI.) The SPI is a formally adopted indicator for Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an international agreement calling for protecting 30% of the land and seas by 2030 - known as the "30 by 30" initiative.
Through rigorous analysis, the SPI assesses whether protected areas, as reported to the World Database on Protected and Conserved Areas (WDPCA), are conserving the habitats species need most and establishing new protected areas that lead to positive biodiversity outcomes.
For the new report, researchers assessed the habitat protection status of approximately 34,000 terrestrial vertebrate (amphibian, bird, mammal, and reptile) species; 45,000 tree species; and 13,000 marine fish and mammal species.
According to their findings, one in five terrestrial vertebrate species live in habitats that are very poorly represented within global protected areas. Alarmingly, the figure is even lower - one out of three - for species considered likely threatened, the researchers report.
Among marine fish and mammal species, one out of 12 species are almost entirely unprotected by the existing global marine protected area network; that number increases to one in eight among likely threatened species.
But there have been recent successes, Jetz said. The report identified improvements in land areas in Oman, French Polynesia, and Uzbekistan, and in marine conservation in areas of French Polynesia, Sri Lanka, and Denmark, among other country successes.
"As we approach the 2030 milestone, science-driven tools like the indicators presented in this report are key," Jetz said. "They can effectively guide outcomes for biodiversity and for all of us who depend on nature's infrastructure."
