The relative importance of COVID-19 pandemic impacts on biodiversity conservation globally

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on almost all aspects of human society and endeavour; the natural world and its conservation have not been spared. Through a process of expert consultation, we identified and categorised, into 19 themes and 70 sub-themes, the ways in which biodiversity and its conservation has been or could be impacted by the pandemic globally; nearly 60% of which were broadly negative in impact. Subsequently, we created a compendium (see Supporting Information) of all themes and sub-themes, each with explanatory text, and in August 2020 a diverse group of experienced conservationists with expertise from across sectors and geographies assessed each sub-theme for its likely impact on biodiversity conservation globally. The 9 sub-themes ranked highest were all negative in impact. These were, in rank order: governments side-lining the environment during their economic recovery, reduced wildlife-based tourism income, increased habitat destruction, reduced government funding, increased plastic and other solid waste pollution, weakening of pro-nature regulations and their enforcement, increased illegal harvest of wild animals, reduced philanthropy, and threats to survival of conservation organisations. In combination, these impacts present a worrying future of increased threats to biodiversity conservation but reduced capacity to counter them. The highest-ranking positive impact, at 10, was the beneficial impact of wildlife trade restrictions. More optimistically, amongst impacts ranked 11 to 20, 6 were positive and 4 were negative. We hope our assessment will draw attention to the impacts of the pandemic, improving the conservation community's ability to respond to them in the future. Article impact statement: The COVID-19 pandemic presents increased threats to biodiversity conservation globally yet reduced capacity to counter them. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.