Protection Status
The role of protected areas in limiting adverse impacts of fire on
biodiversity is often considered to focus on reducing fire risk rather
than mitigating impacts once fire occurs (Eklund et al., 2022; Kearney
et al., 2020). Indeed, there is concern that fire suppression in
protected areas can result in substantial accumulation of flammable
material that increases adverse ecological consequences of fires when
they arise and encourage the formation of communities that are more
sensitive to fire than areas lacking protection (De Groot et al., 2009;
Pereira et al., 2012). We find, however, that protected areas have a
stablishing influence that can limit the magnitude of fire induced
changes in plant communities. Species richness of trees/shrubs increased
(by ~50%) following fires in non-protected sites but
tended to remain similar in protected sites. Similarly, graminoid
community composition resembled that occurring at unburnt control sites
approximately ten years after a fire event in protected sites, yet in
unprotected sites graminoid communities remained highly divergent from
those in control sites ten years after a fire. Whilst tropical protected
areas are not always managed as effectively as possible (Laurence et
al., 2012), our results suggest that protected areas can reduce the
impacts of fire on tropical plant communities and promote more rapid
recovery due to having low anthropogenic pressure (Geldmann et al.,
2019) and suitable ecological condition for diverse community (Gray et
al., 2016). Accelerated recovery will be expected if unburnt areas
within protected sites enable faster re-colonisation of burnt patches
than in unprotected landscapes in which the distance to large intact
habitat patches is greater (Gray et al., 2016). Faster recovery in
protected areas may also arise due to protection from subsequent human
activity following fire events, such as increased grazing, hunting,
logging, collecting firewood etc. (Andam et al., 2008), that enables
faster recovery.