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A call to integrate animal movement into biodiversity indicators

Published Article

Global

Publication date: June 17, 2026

File format: URL

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Animal movement data offer a powerful way to improve biodiversity indicators used to track global conservation goals. By adding biological realism, mechanistic understanding and early-warning capabilities, movement-based indicators can better detect ecological change, identify drivers of biodiversity loss and support more effective conservation policies.

Subject Tags

  • Biodiversity
  • Ecosystem management
  • Policy

Highlights

  • Animal movement data can make biodiversity indicators more biologically meaningful and responsive to environmental change.
  • Movement-based indicators provide early-warning signals that can help guide conservation action before major biodiversity loss occurs.
  • Tracking animal movements helps identify drivers of biodiversity decline and recovery, improving understanding of ecological systems.
  • Researchers recommend integrating empirical movement data into existing connectivity metrics and developing new movement-informed biodiversity indicators.

Abstract

Animal movement data have transformed our understanding of ecological systems and shaped conservation practice, but have limited influence on tracking progress towards international biodiversity goals. Existing biodiversity indicators adopted in frameworks such as the Kunming–Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework — the primary multilateral conservation agreement that aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 — are typically not responsive enough to detect biodiversity change in time to guide action, nor sufficiently biologically informative to explain or predict changes. In this Perspective, we provide seven reasons why movement data can help to tackle these limitations by adding biological realism, mechanistic understanding, and early-warning capacity to current and future indicators. Movement data already inform conservation efforts, from local management to global treaties for migratory species, and are increasingly helpful to uncover sources of environmental change, while enhancing monitoring capability and policy relevance. We recommend that the scientific community ground existing connectivity metrics in empirical movement data, develop new indicators that flag rapid change, and invest in modelling and attribution studies that use movement data to identify drivers of biodiversity loss and recovery.

Citation

Oliver, R.Y., Hébert, K., Hughey, L.F. et al. A call to integrate animal movement into biodiversity indicators. Nat. Rev. Biodivers. 2, 467–479 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-026-00173-x

TNC Authors