Protected areas unevenly contribute to terrestrial vertebrate habitat conservation in China

Ensuring habitat representativeness is fundamental to area-based conservation, yet the effectiveness and efficiency of individual protected areas in meeting this goal remain underexamined, potentially impeding targeted strategies. Here we assessed habitat representativeness, representativeness contribution and representativeness density across China’s protected areas to evaluate their performance in meeting species conservation needs, using refined species distribution data. The overall network’s habitat representativeness was 62.39%, fully meeting conservation needs for 28.33% of species. Among them, 175 protected areas contributed over half of existing achievement for 751 species, including 148 fully dependent on one site, revealing uneven conservation efforts and species-site dependencies. While protected area size correlated with habitat representativeness and contribution, species richness also correlated with contribution and density, showing size alone may not determine efficiency. We then classified protected areas into four efficiency-based categories and proposed tailored strategies. Our metric-driven assessment provides a systematic approach to identifying gaps and optimizing conservation priorities at site level across the country. 175 of China’s 2111 protected areas contribute over half of the habitat conservation success for 751 terrestrial vertebrates, with 148 of these species covered by only one site, highlighting uneven conservation efforts, according to an efficiency analysis using refined species distribution data.