Legacy effects of locally extinct flagship species on protected areas

Protected areas (PAs) are often established to conserve flagship megafauna so as to mobilize political support and secure sustained conservation investment, with the expectation that flagship‐centered governance will also protect habitat. Despite such efforts, flagship species can experience extirpation, raising a fundamental question: do conservation systems endure beyond the species that inspired protection? Using a causal‐inference framework combining propensity‐score matching and the synthetic‐control method, we compared observed forest loss to counterfactual expectations before and after extirpation of the Javan rhinoceros ( Rhinoceros sondaicus ) from Vietnam's Cat Tien National Park and tiger ( Panthera tigris ) from Laos's Nam Et–Phou Louey National Park. Our results show that forest loss trajectories did not change after flagship species extirpation, but pre‐extirpation effectiveness differed. Cat Tien functioned better than expected, while Nam Et–Phou Louey fell short of expectations, and these trajectories persisted. Ultimately, PA effectiveness was shaped not by flagship species extirpation but rather by the underlying management capacity.