Short Communication African development corridors intersect key protected areas Sean Sloan 1 *, Bastian Bertzky 2,3 and William F. Laurance 1,2 1 Center for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science, College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Cairns, Qld 4870, Australia, 2 European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES), Via Enrico Fermi 2749, 21027 Ispra, VA, Italy and 3 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), World Heritage Programme, Rue Mauverney 28, 1196 Gland, Switzerland Introduction Unprecedented growth of mining and agriculture in Africa is encroaching on remaining habitats. Mining in Africa frequently occurs in proximity to protected areas (PAs), more than in other world regions (Dur an, Rauch & Gaston, 2013), and at least 23 African PAs have been degazetted or downgraded as a result (Edwards et al., 2014). Even natural World Heritage Sites, the global pinnacle of conservation, suffer mining and oil/gas exploration and exploitation across 31 sites and 18 African countries (WWF, 2015), again more than other world regions (WWF, 2016). The anticipated expansion of transport ‘development corridors’ related to infrastructure and resource development could impact the ecological integrity of many other PAs as roads and rails link producers with refineries and ports over vast distances (Weng et al., 2013). Recent analysis highlights frequent intersections between 33 African development corridors and PAs (Laurance et al., 2015b). Only five existing or proposed corridors were considered ‘advisable’ given their potential environmental costs and agricultural benefits (another 22 were ‘marginal’ and six ‘inadvisable’). However, while insightful, the aggregate analysis of Laurance et al. (2015b) overlooked important differences between the conservation objectives of intersected PAs. Protected-area significance and management objectives vary along a spectrum from global importance and/or strict protection to local importance and nominally regulated exploitation. Only half of the 15% of African PAs with reported IUCN management categories had stricter protection levels (Categories I-IV) indicative of greater levels of natural integrity – a low figure by global standards (Deguignet et al., 2014, IUCN and UNEP-WCMC, 2015). It remains unclear which pole of this ‘PA spectrum’ is most threat- ened by corridors and to which degree. This uncertainty is compounded by the fact that most of the 33 corridors are in some stage of planning, so that it is also unclear whether the greatest impacts are pending or already realized. The ongoing expansion of Africa’s development corridors and mining sector urges the resolution of these uncertainties to inform regional environmental planning (Edwards et al., 2014; Laurance et al., 2014). Here, we detail actual and potential intersections between African development corridors and a range of PA designations, focusing on designations of the greatest conservation significance, to clarify corridors’ potential effects on conservation objectives. We further detail variations in corridors’ intersections with PAs according to their development status in order to differentiate between current and potential future ecological impacts. The actual effect of intersections on ecological integrity is inevitably site specific and, in special circumstances, might entail benefits; yet, the weight of historical experience suggests that intersections by transportation infrastructure often pose challenges to ecological integrity insofar as they facilitate deforestation, logging or resource extraction, poaching, fragmentation of ecological communities, or hydrological and climatic changes in PAs (Forman & Alexander, 1998; Wilkie et al., 2000; Walsh et al., 2003; Blake et al., 2007, 2008; Laurance, Goosem & Laurance, 2009; Freitas, Hawbaker & Metzger, 2010; Maisels et al., 2013; Barber et al., 2014; Perz, 2014; Hopcraft et al., 2015a). Our analysis shows that corridors, and particu- larly proposed corridors, disproportionately intersect, and thus by extension may challenge the ecological integrity of the most important PAs in Africa. *Correspondence: E-mail: sean.sloan@jcu.edu.au © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Afr. J. Ecol. 1