Oui la création de nouvelles surfaces de protections et de restauration des écosystème dégradés est l’une des meilleures solutions pour la protection de la Biodiversité

Dzień dobry! From my prospective it depends. Where the PA or MPA supposed to be created, which species would be protected, how effective an enforcement supposed to be, etc. In some cases "paper parks" creation bring nothing and the restoration could be much more effective.

I agree mostly with Zgurovsky's answer.

It depends on what you want to achieve. Sometimes, protected areas won't work by themselves. You need to have the right management. Restoration won't be easy, and you might not achieve it. It needs a plan on the ecosystem, the target you wish to achieve, and of course, the stakeholders that will participate need to be helpful in every way they can.

The creation of new protected areas is very useful for protection of diversity of species.For example to south of West Atlantic Ocean was created the Namuncurá-Burdwood Bank (54°30 and 60°30 w ;54°30 S and 59°30w;54°15 S and 60°30w,54° 15S and 59°30w).

This protected area is between the coast line of province Tierra del Fuego and Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands).

This area was created because the author of this answer by means of a study of cnidarians populations saw differents populations with differents development such as calcified skeletal or spicular skeletal. Both of them skeletal haven differents times for growing and disturb of environmental can to destroy these skeletal and can to disappear the species.

Why can't both the strategies work together? Why to choose just one of these?

I agree, in some cases both approaches should be used simultaneously.

Jaswinder Sandhu you don't have to choose one. Of course, both can be work together. It depends on your targets and then see what do you need to achieve it. If you need both strategies then do it.

You have to be clear on what you want to achieve, and with that perspective make your final decision. However, activities to preserve or manage for conservation might be done in both, protected areas and restored ecosystems. Many times, the final call will be defined as a result of logistic or financial possibilities. At the end, I would suggest to do your best according to your possibilities.

Both are very good options, depending on the context. Furthermore, there are cases where not only protection or restoration is required, but also existing practices must be improved, for example in agriculture and livestock farming.

If the ecosystem is degraded, "protection" is unlikely to lead to an improvement for biodiversity, function, resilience etc. To improve the outcome for a degraded ecosystem, at a minimum the processes causing degradation need to be halted, reduced or better managed. And if the degradation is so severe that the original ecosystem has collapsed or its key functions ceased, restoration of those functions (e.g., by landform management, species reintroduction/planting, etc) is probably needed.

Protection by itself is fraught. Paper parks (i.e., protected areas by label only, with no actual protection or management actions) have been mentioned, but another issue is the establishment of protected areas in places/of ecosystems that aren't under threat. For example, in Queensland, the main historical cause of land clearing is for agriculture, and in the Brigalow Belt biogeographic region some 90% of vegetation has been cleared. For scale, the Brigalow Belt in Queensland is about the size of Germany. There are several National Parks in the area, but they almost exclusively protect rocky mountain ranges, plateaux and hilly country where there is no suitability for farming. The ecosystems in these mountains are of course worth conserving, but they aren't actually under any threat. Meanwhile, the endangered, at-risk-of-collapse Brigalow and native grassland ecosystems in the fertile, flat, ideal cropping country below are barely represented in protected areas.

Of course that's not to say protected areas have no value. But they need to (a) be in places that would otherwise be at risk of some threatening process, and (b) be actively protected by control and management of those threatening processes.

Dear Researchers, Scientists, Friends,

Thank you all for participating in this discussion. It's incredibly important that we delve into such a crucial issue as biodiversity protection. This is a multifaceted and complex problem, yet also debatable and controversial, which attests to its significance in the context of current environmental challenges.

Commenting on the research question: "Is creating new protected areas or restoring degraded ecosystems a better solution for biodiversity protection?", based on my research and observations, as well as the analysis of the presented problem description, I believe this question is still relevant and important. In my opinion, it's worth continuing the discussion on this topic and undertaking or continuing research to more fully explain various issues and obtain a complete answer. The problem of biodiversity loss is one of the greatest environmental challenges of the 21st century. As rightly stated in the research hypothesis, both protecting pristine areas and restoring degraded environments have their unique advantages and can bring diverse benefits. In my view, protecting existing natural areas, such as rainforests, is absolutely crucial for preserving unique species and intact ecosystem functions. These are our last bastions of biodiversity, whose loss would be irreplaceable. On the other hand, as data from my research shows, re-naturalization, meaning the restoration of degraded lands, for example, by re-establishing wetlands or planting forests in post-industrial areas, has enormous potential to increase the global surface area of hospitable environments, which in the long term can support biodiversity and ecosystem services on a larger scale. I believe that both approaches, while requiring significant financial resources and intensive international cooperation, are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. It's essential to set priorities adapted to local needs and the specific characteristics of a given region.

The research question about which is a better solution for biodiversity protection—creating new protected areas or restoring degraded ecosystems—is still relevant and important because the scale of environmental degradation continues to grow, and pressure on natural resources is not decreasing. New research areas that can be explored now and/or in the future include: assessing the long-term economic viability of re-naturalization projects compared to the costs of creating and maintaining protected areas, researching the effectiveness of various re-naturalization methods depending on ecosystem type and degradation level, analyzing the impact of climate change on the ability of ecosystems to recover and the durability of newly created protected areas, developing innovative management models for protected areas that incorporate local community participation, and investigating the role of technology (e.g., AI, biotechnology) in accelerating and optimizing re-naturalization processes.

Various determinants shaping the key issues of this problem include: government policy and international agreements on nature conservation, the availability of funding and support for ecological projects, the level of societal engagement and awareness, the state of scientific and technological development in ecology and environmental engineering, the economic interests of local communities and industry, and demographic pressure and urbanization. Thank you to all researchers and scientists for participating in the discussion on this topic. I am open to scientific collaboration in this area. I invite you to continue the discussion, as further exchange of views and research findings is crucial for developing optimal strategies to protect our planet.

I invite you to discuss this issue and to engage in scientific cooperation,

Best regards,

Dariusz Prokopowicz