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.