Abstract
Biodiversity keeps declining in the European Union despite the large conservation effort done over the last decades. The Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 aims to address this situation by expanding the network of protected areas (PAs) and enhancing their effectiveness. However, many PAs still lack management plans, which in the case of the Natura 2000 network need to harmonise nature conservation and human uses objectives. We demonstrate how to use a spatial optimisation tool to design a multi-zoning scheme and to spatially direct management actions across the PA that address the Natura 2000 network needs. We integrate distributions of species, habitats and human activities (features) to prioritise the allocation of three management zones within a PA, using the Montseny Natural Park (NE Spain) for demonstration purposes. We also evaluate potential trade-offs between nature conservation and human uses by increasing representation targets for human uses while maintaining biodiversity targets constant. We found little representation trade-offs as targets were achieved (92%) for most of features regardless the representation target for human uses tested. However, we found spatial trade-offs as management zones became more fragmented for large targets on human uses, making the potential implementation of these solutions less feasible and/or effective. This methodology could be useful at addressing the multiple objectives pursued when designing management plans in PAs like Natura 2000 sites. Key aspects that deserve special attention are (i) the need for careful evaluation of the relationships between objectives to identify potential trade-offs and co-benefits and (ii) the designation of management zones were these relationships can be addressed.
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Acknowledgements
H.A was supported by the programme Becas Másteres de Excelencia de la Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera at University of Lleida (MSc European Forestry Erasmus Mundus). A.M.O and V.H were supported by the Spanish Government through the Juan de la Cierva and Ramón y Cajal fellowship programs (IJCI-2016-30349 and RYC-2013-13979 respectively) and the INMODES project (Grant Number: CGL2017-89999-C2-2-R).
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HA, AMO and VH conceived the idea, DV and DG provided data and on the ground expertise of the site for the analyses carried out by HA. AMO and VH supervised the analyses, HA led the writing and all authors contributed substantially to the writing of the manuscript.
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Abarca, H., Morán-Ordoñez, A., Villero, D. et al. Spatial prioritisation of management zones in protected areas for the integration of multiple objectives. Biodivers Conserv 31, 1197–1215 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-022-02383-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-022-02383-z