Aim Comprehensive, global information on species' occurrences is an essential biodiversity variable and central to a range of applications in ecology, evolution, biogeography and conservation. Expert range maps often represent a species' only available distributional information and play an increasing role in conservation assessments and macroecology. We provide global range maps for the native ranges of all extant mammal spec...

Some conservation prioritization methods are based on the assumption that conservation needs overwhelm current resources and not all species can be conserved; therefore, a conservation triage scheme (i.e., when the system is overwhelmed, species should be divided into three groups based on likelihood of survival, and efforts should be focused on those species in the group with the best survival prospects and reduced or denied...

Amazonia is the largest and most diverse of the tropical forest wilderness areas. Recent compilations indicate at least 40,000 plant species, 427 mammals, 1294 birds, 378 reptiles, 427 amphibians, and around 3,000 fishes. Not homogeneous in its plant and animal communities, it is an archipelago of distinct areas of endemism separated by the major rivers. Biogeographic studies of terrestrial vertebrates have identified eight su...

Although Brazil's first park was established in 1937, the past two decades have witnessed an explosion of protected areas. Until 1989 federal parks and reserves were created by the Brazilian Forest Development Institute (IBDF) and the Special Secretariat for the Environment (SEMA). In 1989 SEMA and IBDF were united to form the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA). A formal, unified sy...

Nearly half the world's vascular plant species and one‐third of terrestrial vertebrates are endemic to 25 “hotspots” of biodiversity, each of which has at least 1500 endemic plant species. None of these hotspots have more than one‐third of their pristine habitat remaining. Historically, they covered 12% of the land's surface, but today their intact habitat covers only 1.4% of the land. As a result of this habitat loss, we expe...