Mammal diversity, threats, and knowledge across spatial scales

Spatial scale is a fundamental consideration in planning for biodiversity conservation. Limited resources means that decision and policy makers often take a triage approach to biodiversity conservation, addressing the most pressing issues first and then proceeding as resources allow. At the global scale, where international treaties and multinational planning are necessary --- it is important to have access to the best data available and to unbiased and comprehensive analysis. However few conservation actions can be performed at the global scale, and it becomes increasingly important to be able to "zoom in" to priorioty countries or regions to implement policy or other decisions. At regional scales, regulations can be put into place, protected areas can be designated and other broad reaching actions --- but still finer scales are necessary to implement effective management of areas or species. From the regional scale we can prioritize sites for specific treatments or actions, and thus scale down even further to be able to manage populations, parks, watersheds or species. Herein we provide a global dataset and analysis framework to address declines in mammal populations and ultimately extinction risk. By making this data freely and publically available we hope that it can bring the best science to bear on decision making globally and nationally. Protected areas are among the most powerful tools available to protect species and populations within and between countries -- thus at the regional scale we examine the effectiveness of land stewardship on mammal populations. Because protected areas alone are seldom large enough to retain large mammal populations, we then evaluated the utility of a biological corridor, at the landscape scale, in providing linkage between protected areas. Finally we examine this same landscape in terms of the need to broaden our ecological decision making parameters to include terrestrial, freshwater and marine components -- and explore means by which ecological services transcend these biomes and why decision making need take all into consideration. We conclude that spatial scale is a fundamental issue that is often neglected in decision making and that in many cases conservation planning recommendations are either too broad or too specific in the context of the policy tools available.