How Will Environmental Conditions Affect Habitat Suitability and Survival of Endangered Species in the Coming Decades—A Review

Species are disappearing worldwide and the expectation is this will get worse in the fu-ture. The most important factors responsible for this are changes in climate and land use, with land use ranked the most important. Changes in the latter resulting in the destruc-tion of natural habitats are thought to be the primer driver. Climate change is, however, also often cited as one of the major driving forces. To reduce the effect of climate change on the decline in biodiversity, it should be moderated by adopting the so called “climate smart conservation”. For this, it is important to know, how climate change will affect the abundance and distribution of species in the future. While it is thought that changes in land use are now more important than climate change in the reduction of biodiversity, it is expected that the latter will play an increasingly important role in the future. On top of that, there exist many other contributing factors: e.g., overexploitation, eutrophication and the introduction of pathogens and herbivorous mammals that also play an important role.