Towards a taxonomically unbiased European Union biodiversity strategy for 2030

Through the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) and the financial investmentsof the LIFE projects, Europe has become an experimental arena for biologicalconservation. With an estimated annual budget ofEUR20 billion, the EU Biodi-versity Strategy for 2030 has set an ambitious goal of classifying 30% of itsland and sea territory as Protected Areas and ensuring no deterioration inconservation trends and the status of protected species. We analysed LIFEprojects focused on animals from 1992 to 2018 and found that investmentin vertebrates was six times higher than that for invertebrates (EUR970 versusEUR150 million), with birds and mammals alone accounting for 72% of speciesand 75% of the total budget. In relative terms, investment per speciestowards vertebrates has been 468 times higher than that for invertebrates.Using a trait-based approach, we show that conservation effort is primarilyexplained by species'popularity rather than extinction risk or body size.Therefore, we propose a roadmap to achieve unbiased conservation targetsfor 2030 and beyond.1. IntroductionOverwhelming evidence exists that most Earth ecosystem processes are beingaltered by human activities, suggesting that we may have entered a human-dominated geological epoch--the'Anthropocene'[1]. It is largely accepted thathumans are causing the sixth mass species extinction [2], which can be considereda clarion call to increase global efforts to study, halt, and possibly reverse theongoing negative environmental trends. Europe is no exception, given that it hasa long experience of human disturbance and consequent biodiversity loss [3]. Atthe same time, since the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) was established in 1992,the European Union (EU) has acted as a global test case for practical conservationand restoration of natural habitats and their wild flora and fauna.Although the Habitats Directive and the parallel financial investment on LIFEprojects--the EU flagship funding instrument for the environment and climate© 2020 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionLicense http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the originalauthor and source are credited.