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Comparing alternative systematic conservation planning strategies against a politically driven conservation plan

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Abstract

Decisions regarding the level of detail included in conservation planning and the importance given to feasibility considerations can greatly influence management in terms of total area required, achievement of conservation targets and costs. This work had two main objectives: (1) to compare priority sites proposed by the Chilean commission for the environment in a politically driven process to the results of alternative systematic conservation planning scenarios; and (2) to compare the efficacy of systematic conservation planning based on different types of conservation targets (forest types and bird species) and minimum area thresholds. To address these issues, we used vegetation cover as well as field data on forest birds in central Chile. Bird species distributions were modeled using a variety of climatic and environmental layers, allowing for the integration of environmental heterogeneity into the planning process. We then ran several conservation planning scenarios considering conservation targets based on vegetation types alone, birds alone, or a combination of vegetation and birds. Collectively these results show that conservation planning results differ significantly when considering birds or vegetation types, and that minimum area requirements for each conservation feature has a great influence on the final results. Moreover, important conservation sites are not represented in the current government plan, and these sites are related to the small representation of rare vegetation types. This study suggests that using appropriate minimum area requirements can greatly affect the results of a conservation planning exercise and therefore represents a key knowledge gap in the region.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Rufford Small Grant, a Jastro Shield fellowship, the US National Biological Information Infrastructure program, a Fulbright fellowship to C. N. M. and the Iniciativa Científica Milenio (P04-065-F) of the government of Chile. We thank the CONAF for providing all the necessary permits, and the hospitality of all the park rangers. Field assistance was provided by Ana María Venegas, María Angélica Vukasovic, Erik Inestroza and Erin Espeland. Art Shapiro, Steve Greco and an anonymous reviewer provided useful comments in early versions of this manuscript, Pablo A. Marquet provided useful discussions regarding conservation in Chile. To all we are grateful. This is PRBO contribution #1663 and ISEM contribution #2009-012.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution, UMR 5554, Université de Montpellier 2, Place Eugène Bataillon, CC 065, 34095, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Christine N. Meynard

  2. Grupo Científico Milenio FORECOS, Instituto de Silvicultura, 4º Piso Facultad de Ciencias Forestales, Universidad Austral, Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile

    Christine N. Meynard

  3. PRBO Conservation Science, 3820 Cypress Dr., Petaluma, CA, 94954, USA

    Christine A. Howell

  4. Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, 1 Shields Ave., Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    James F. Quinn

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  1. Christine N. Meynard
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Correspondence to Christine N. Meynard.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 3.

Table 3 Summary of general sampling sites characteristics with respect to the variables used as predictors in the species distribution models
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Appendix 2

See Table 4.

Table 4 Factor loadings for each environmental principal component axis used in the modeling process
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Appendix 3

See Table 5.

Table 5 Additional performance measures for occurrence models
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Appendix 4

See Table 6.

Table 6 Area required for each conservation strategy
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Appendix 5

See Table 7.

Table 7 Percentage of area of each species habitat (according to the species distribution models) within each protection category (SNASPE or CONAMA sites) and in the best solution for each of the eight conservation scenarios
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Appendix 6

See Table 8.

Table 8 Percentage of area of each vegetation type within each protection category (SNASPE or CONAMA sites) and in the best solution for each of the eight conservation experiments
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Meynard, C.N., Howell, C.A. & Quinn, J.F. Comparing alternative systematic conservation planning strategies against a politically driven conservation plan. Biodivers Conserv 18, 3061–3083 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-009-9625-3

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