DOI: 10.5061/dryad.c2ss6
title: Data from: Long-term avian community response to housing development at the boundary of U.S. protected areas: effect size increases with time

description: 1. Biodiversity conservation is a primary function of protected areas.
 However, protected areas also attract people, and therefore, land use has
 intensified at the boundaries of these lands globally. In the USA, since
 the 1970s, housing growth at the boundaries (&lt;1 km) of protected
 areas has increased at a rate far higher than on more distant private
 lands. Here, we designed our analyses to address our central hypothesis
 that increasing housing density in and near protected areas will
 increasingly alter their avian communities. 2. We quantified the
 relationship between abundance and richness of protected-area avian
 species of greatest conservation need, land-cover affiliates (e.g. species
 associated with natural land cover such as forest breeders) and
 synanthropes (e.g. species associated with humans) with housing density on
 the boundary of protected areas and on more distant private lands from
 1970 to 2010 in three ecoregions of the USA. We accomplished this using
 linear mixed-model analyses, data from the US Census Bureau and 90 routes
 of the North American Breeding Bird Survey. 3. Housing density at the
 boundary of protected areas tended to be strongly negatively related with
 the abundance and richness of species of greatest conservation need and
 land-cover affiliates (upwards of 88% of variance explained) and strongly
 positively related with synanthropes (upwards of 83% of variance
 explained). The effect size of these relationships increased in most cases
 from 1970 to 2010 and was greatest in the densely developed eastern
 forests. In the more sparsely populated West, we found similar, though
 weaker, associations. 4. Housing density on private lands more distant
 from protected areas had similar, but more muted negative effects. 5.
 Synthesis and applications. Our results illustrate that as housing density
 has increased along the boundary of protected areas, the conservation
 benefit of these lands has likely diminished. We urge conservation
 planners to prioritize the purchase of private-land inholdings in order to
 maximize the extent of unfragmented natural lands within protected areas.
 Further, we strongly recommend that land-use planners implement boundary
 management strategies to alter the pattern of human access to protected
 areas, cluster development to concentrate the footprint of rural housing,
 and establish conservation agreements through local land trusts to buffer
 protected areas from the effects of development along protected-area
 boundaries. To maximize the conservation benefit of protected areas, we
 suggest that housing development should be restricted within 1 km of their
 boundaries.
description: BBS_Routes_Housing_and_Bird_Guild_Abundance_Richness_inside_outside_USA_Protected_AreasThis file contains Data on 45 USA Breeding Bird Survey Routes, their associated Bird Conservation Region, housing density summarized within 400 m of BBS routes, and bird guilds, as described in our paper. Further, we provide summarized (proportion of 400 m buffers of BBS routes) National Land Cover Database layers. Additionally, this file contains housing density for paired BBS routes (routes located outside Protected Areas). The outside protected area housing density was summarized within 400 m of BBS Routes.