Biological vs. social, economic and political priority-setting in conservation

The most influential conservation priority‐setting approaches emphasize biodiversity and threats when deciding where to focus investment. However, socio‐economic and political attributes of nations influence the effectiveness of conservation actions. A combination of biological and sociological variables in the context of a ‘return on investment’ framework for establishing conservation priorities was explored. While there was some overlap between megadiversity nations and return on investment priorities, only a few countries emerged as high priorities irrespective of which factors were included in the analysis. Conversely, some countries that ranked highly as priorities for conservation when focusing solely on biological metrics, did not rank highly when governance, population pressure, economic costs and conservation needs were considered (e.g. Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia and Venezuela). No priority‐setting scheme is a priori superior to alternative approaches. However, the analyses suggest that attention to governance and return on investment may alter biocentric assessments of ideal conservation investments.     

The pitfall-trap of species conservation priority setting

To elucidate the factors underlying species conservation priority setting, we analysed the relationships among species’ structural complexity, scientific attention, threatened species listing, and conservation investments at different organisational levels, including global, European, national, and sub-national. Although the literature often highlights the need to consider criteria other than extinction risk status, our results show that an excessive use of Red lists still persists in the setting of conservation priorities. We found that organismal complexity, available scientific information, and species listing combine together to create a positive feed-back loop, in which more complex organisms have a larger proportion of threatened species in the Red lists and legal lists. This bias promotes research that is devoted to understanding conservation problems as well as more funds invested to solve them. We propose that a sort of pitfall-trap is currently constraining the species conservation priority setting, in which few species, mainly threatened and better-known species, tend to receive most of the funds and policy attention. To counteract this pitfall-trap, we highlight the need to increase scientific effort on lower taxa and expand Red lists to assess lesser-known taxonomic groups as well as the need to use other criteria for species conservation prioritisation.     

Habitat conservation prioritization: A floristic approach applied to a Mediterranean wetland network

The importance of plant communities for conservation purposes is recognized in their inclusion in the “Habitat Directive” (92/43 EEC), that relates habitat types to plant community syntaxonomic units. However, habitat definitions in the Habitat Directive lead to several inaccuracies in local habitat characterization. Several wetland plant communities (and their corresponding habitats), rare in the Mediterranean basin, are not included in the Habitat Directive. This study proposes criteria for assessing the conservation importance of habitats. It deals with plant community types at the alliance level, as promising units for setting conservation priorities. The principle criteria considered as drivers for setting alliance conservation values are the distribution and abundance of plant species of conservation interest and their fidelity to a plant community. Multivariate methods were used, and a quantitative floristic index of alliance conservation priority was created. This procedure was applied to an important wetland in central Italy. Results emphasize: (i) high conservation values of some alliances not listed in the Habitat Directive, confirming various gaps in the current conservation law affecting Mediterranean wetlands; (ii) that habitats widely distributed in other biogeographical areas, may greatly underestimate their conservation importance in Mediterranean region; (iii) need to consider regional peculiarities when setting conservation priorities.     

Priorities for biodiversity monitoring in Europe: A review of supranational policies and a novel scheme for integrative prioritization

Trends and status of species and habitats need to be measured to assess whether global biodiversity policy targets have been achieved. However, it is impossible to monitor all species and habitats with a justifiable effort. Therefore, it is critical to prioritize the monitoring of specific biodiversity components. Priorities must be linked to key nature conservation policies to ensure that monitoring efforts are relevant to policy needs, achieve maximum impact, and obtain governmental support. Here we discuss priority setting in biodiversity monitoring in view of monitoring obligations and priorities in supranational biodiversity legislation and policies in Europe and assess overlaps in priorities among policies. While most supranational biodiversity regulations require monitoring of biodiversity, obligations are legally enforceable only for the Nature Directives, the Water Framework Directive, and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive of the European Union. Of the assessed international conventions and other relevant policy instruments about 50% explicitly designate priority species and most focus on vertebrates. Lower emphasis is given to habitats and geographical priorities are even less pronounced. Also, an overarching system for monitoring prioritization is still missing. Our prioritization system is based on three main criteria: (1) legal requirement for reporting, (2) wording used to define priority or importance, and (3) inclusion in lists that indicate importance of monitoring due to e.g. threats or relevance of a region for a species. Our system contains five main priority levels, within which an additional division differentiates priorities according to national/European responsibility criteria. Based on this system, we provide recommendations for allocating species and habitats enlisted by the reviewed policy tools to explicit non-overlapping priority levels. Our approach will facilitate synergies between monitoring activities for different policy needs, and contribute to alleviate the notorious resource shortage for biodiversity monitoring.     

Mammals on the EDGE: conservation priorities based on threat and phylogeny

Conservation priority setting based on phylogenetic diversity has frequently been proposed but rarely implemented. Here, we define a simple index that measures the contribution made by different species to phylogenetic diversity and show how the index might contribute towards species-based conservation priorities. We describe procedures to control for missing species, incomplete phylogenetic resolution and uncertainty in node ages that make it possible to apply the method in poorly known clades. We also show that the index is independent of clade size in phylogenies of more than 100 species, indicating that scores from unrelated taxonomic groups are likely to be comparable. Similar scores are returned under two different species concepts, suggesting that the index is robust to taxonomic changes. The approach is applied to a near-complete species-level phylogeny of the Mammalia to generate a global priority list incorporating both phylogenetic diversity and extinction risk. The 100 highest-ranking species represent a high proportion of total mammalian diversity and include many species not usually recognised as conservation priorities. Many species that are both evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered (EDGE species) do not benefit from existing conservation projects or protected areas. The results suggest that global conservation priorities may have to be reassessed in order to prevent a disproportionately large amount of mammalian evolutionary history becoming extinct in the near future.     

Determination of national conservation responsibilities for species conservation in regions with multiple political jurisdictions

The Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) commits its signatories to the identification and monitoring of biodiversity. The European Union has implemented this commitment into its legislation. Despite the legal requirement resources are scarce, requiring a prioritization of conservation actions, including e.g. monitoring. Red lists are currently the most prominent tool for priority setting in applied conservation, despite the fact that they were not developed for that purpose. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that they do not always reflect actual conservation needs. As a response, the concept of national responsibility as a complementary tool was developed during the last two decades. The existing methods are country specific and mainly incomparable on an international scale. Here, we present a newly developed method, which is applicable to any taxonomic group, adjustable to different geographic scales, with little data requirements and clear categorizations. We apply the new method to over 1,000 species in several countries of different size and report on the applicability of our method and discuss problems that derive from the currently available data. Our method has several major advantages compared to currently available methods. It is applicable to any geographic range, allows automatization, given database availability, and is readily adjustable to future data improvements. It further has comparably low data demands by exploiting one of the most commonly available information on biodiversity, i.e. distribution maps. We believe that our method allows the allocation of the limited resources in nature conservation in the most sensible way, e.g. the sharing of monitoring duties, effectively selecting networks of protected areas, improving knowledge on biodiversity, and closing information gaps in many species groups.     

Plant communities as a tool for setting priorities in biodiversity conservation: a novel approach to Iberian aquatic vegetation

Although conservation efforts are traditionally based on species red lists or similar documents, recent initiatives are starting to shift this scope to include other biodiversity structures and biological classifications. Plant communities have been indicated as being among the most promising categories for setting conservation priorities but their importance and potential is still underestimated. In this study we develop a conservation priority list based on aquatic plant communities of the Iberian Peninsula. Four criteria were used to perform a cumulative point-scoring ranking: regional responsibility, local rarity, wealth of its endangered flora, and habitat vulnerability. Our ranking constitutes the first comprehensive classification of aquatic vegetation in relation to its conservation priorities in Southern Europe. It reveals that amphibious communities are the most important vegetation target for conservation in Iberia related to oligotrophic environments with a bioclimatic Atlantic distribution. Plant communities characteristic of eutrophic waters or widely distributed were found to be cause for less concern when setting conservation priorities. Our results bring to light various discrepancies and gaps in current conservation laws affecting the Iberian Peninsula. Our study highlights the potential of plant communities in biodiversity conservation as they provide valuable information of habitat singularity, and supports that neither the sole use of species nor large scale approaches unaware of regional singularities are appropriate in setting conservation priorities.     

A genome evolution-based framework for measures of originality for clades

To evaluate the originality of a species for determining its conservation priority, most indices use the branching pattern and the branch length of a phylogenetic tree to represent the diversification pattern and the number of characters. One limitation of these indices is their lack of consideration of the dynamic process, such as character changes and distribution along lineages during evolution. In this study, we propose a robust framework incorporating the underlying dynamic processes under a framework of genome evolution to model character changes and distribution along different lineages in a given phylogenetic tree. Our framework provides a more transparent modeling, instead of the simple surrogates of branching pattern and branch length previously employed. Nonrandom extinction has been found to be clustered within old and species-poor clades, thus it is desirable to combine the evaluation of originality of clades, which will provide a more complete picture and a useful tool for setting global conservation priorities. Using a phylogenetic tree consisting of 70 species of New World terrestrial Carnivora, we demonstrate that the index derived from our framework can discern the difference in originality of clades. Moreover, we demonstrate that the originality of clades and species in a tree changes with different scenarios of dynamic processes, which were neglected by previous indices. We find that the originality of clades should be one of the criteria for setting global conservation priorities.     

Using genetic structure data and phylogenetic criteria in attributing prioritization scores for conservation of spontaneous Capparis spinosa L. populations from Tunisia

In Tunisia, the increasing pharmacological demand for spontaneous capers is actually leading to progressive forest overexploitation and genetic erosion of the species that is actually represented by scattered populations. Therefore, inventories with emphasis on the characterization, management and conservation of this medicinal plant are becoming a great need.In this work, genetic and phylogenetic criteria based on isozyme markers were used for the prioritization of spontaneous Capparis spinosa L. populations for conservation according to Vane-Wright and collaborators taxic method.Enzymatic loci varied in their ability to detect variation and population analyses indicated that most of the variation is partitioned between rather than within populations. Fst, gene flow values, PCA and cluster analysis also revealed significant differentiation between all populations.When combing phylogenetic and genetic criteria we were able to prioritize some of the populations for conservation. Therefore, the standardization and the summatory of all indices indicated that the populations Nebeur, Nahli and Dyr rank as a priority for conservation.So far, results of the present study appear to justify the in situ conservation strategy, where core areas completely free from perturbation would be defined for the populations with the highest priority for conservation, with the populations presenting unique alleles. This would guarantee the maintenance of most of the species’ genetic variation. The ex situ conservation management strategy would imply the setting up of specialized nurseries and national collections that are still missing in the country to counteract population fragmentation, demographic loss and genetic erosion threatening such spontaneous populations.     

Accounting for non-independence of extinction probabilities in the derivation of conservation priorities based on Weitzman’s diversity concept

In the original formulation of Weitzman’s diversity concept, extinction probabilities of different operational taxonomic units (OTUs) are implicitly defined to be independent. In this study, it is shown, that dependencies like concurrence or synergistic relations between OTUs can be accounted for by assuming that joint extinction probabilities differ from the product of the extinction probabilities of the interacting OTUs. A fully analytical treatment is provided for the case of two interacting OTUs, and all cases are illustrated with an example data set. For the case of concurring OTUs, the following general results are derived: (a) concurrence between OTUs always reduces the amount of diversity expected to be conserved in the future; (b) concurrence has a more adverse effect on the more endangered OTUs involved; (c) concurrence can change conservation priorities between OTUs; and (d) with high levels of concurrence, investments in the conservation of some of the concurring OTUs can have a negative effect on the overall diversity conserved. In addition to conservation activities targeted towards some of the OTUs, reduction of the causes of concurrence may be a valid and cost-efficient alternative. For the case of synergistic dependencies between OTUs it was found, that such dependencies always increase the conservation potential of the involved OTUs but may lead to a change of priority ranking in extreme cases. Finally possible extensions and generalisations of the suggested approach are discussed and it is argued, that by adopting these extensions Weitzman’s diversity concept becomes an even more powerful and flexible tool to derive conservation priorities both in an ecological and in a farm animal context.     

Maximizing species conservation in continental Ecuador: a case of systematic conservation planning for biodiverse regions

Ecuador has the largest number of species by area worldwide, but also a low representation of species within its protected areas. Here, we applied systematic conservation planning to identify potential areas for conservation in continental Ecuador, with the aim of increasing the representation of terrestrial species diversity in the protected area network. We selected 809 terrestrial species (amphibians, birds, mammals, and plants), for which distributions were estimated via species distribution models (SDMs), using Maxent. For each species we established conservation goals based on conservation priorities, and estimated new potential protected areas using Marxan conservation planning software. For each selected area, we determined their conservation priority and feasibility of establishment, two important aspects in the decision-making processes. We found that according to our conservation goals, the current protected area network contains large conservation gaps. Potential areas for conservation almost double the surface area of currently protected areas. Most of the newly proposed areas are located in the Coast, a region with large conservation gaps and irreversible changes in land use. The most feasible areas for conservation were found in the Amazon and Andes regions, which encompass more undisturbed habitats, and already harbor most of the current reserves. Our study allows defining a viable strategy for preserving Ecuador''s biodiversity, by combining SDMs, GIS-based decision-support software, and priority and feasibility assessments of the selected areas. This approach is useful for complementing protected area networks in countries with great biodiversity, insufficient biological information, and limited resources for conservation.     

Plant diversity and priority conservation areas of Northwestern Yunnan,China

The Global Plant Conservation Strategy of the Convention on Biological Diversity calls for “protection of 50% of the most important areas for plant diversity.” All global biodiversity analyses have identified the mountains of northwestern Yunnan as a conservation priority for plant diversity. The challenge we were presented with was how to transform this sweeping global recognition into regional geographic priorities and measurable conservation action. This challenge is especially acute in Yunnan where there are no readily accessible data on the distribution and status of plant diversity, yet great conservation urgency due to the rapid pace of economic development. We used endangered and endemic species to represent plant diversity as a whole due to time and financial constraints. To identify conservation priorities, we relied on experts’ knowledge, supplemented with a rapidly assembled plant diversity data base, rapid field assessments to fill knowledge gaps, and analyses of the spatial patterns of richness and habitat relationships. Ninety-eight endangered species and 703 endemic species occur in the project area. Experts identified nine Plant Diversity Conservation Areas for northwestern Yunnan, including eight specific geographies and one priority habitat. We found that the current nature reserve system is serving an important role in plant diversity protection, even though many of the reserves were not specifically designated for plant diversity considerations. This project provided a means for scientific experts to directly contribute to conservation decision-making by government and Non-Government Organizations, and essential information for the plant conservation in Northwestern Yunnan.     

Assessing conservation priorities of threatened medicinal plants in China: A new comprehensive phylogenetic scoring system

Over-harvesting, habitat loss and fragmentation, and biological invasions have led to a sharp decline in wild medicinal plants population in China, where they are an essential component of traditional medicine and used widely. The current national list of protected medicinal materials, the State Key-protected Wild Medicinal Species List (SKPWMSL), which has not been revised for 30 years, is in urgent need of an update. This study proposes a new scoring system with seven indicators that set the conservation priorities of threatened medicinal plants. The advantages of our approach include: (i) quantitative methods with high repeatability and comparability; and (ii) consideration of the evolutionary history of medicinal species. After assessing 911 threatened medicinal angiosperms in China, we identified 112 species as key medicinal plants for conservation priority (KMPCP). We suggest promoting the SKPWMSL with KMPCP as a supplement and update. Meanwhile, our scoring system will improve the future setting of conservation priority and can be extended to other countries or regions.     

Assessing priority areas by imperilled species: insights from the European butterflies

Biodiversity hotspots have been variously defined in terms of species richness, endemic species or imperilled species. The use of imperilled species to locate priority areas is particularly problematic, because an area that hosts a large number of imperilled species is likely to be under severe threats, making less effective conservation efforts. A possibly way to answer this problem is to assess species threats at two spatial scales. Then, areas which host concentrations of species that are imperilled at the larger scale, but not at the smaller scale, can be considered as priority areas where conservation efforts are expected to be more effective. An application of this procedure to the European butterfly fauna with the Biodiversity Conservation Concern index calculated with two IUCN red listings (European and national) allowed the construction of a four-celled model that reflects different types of conservation priority. This combined use of international and regional red lists may be a tool to make practical decisions (e.g. allocation of funds or legislative actions) to preserve imperilled species.     

Geographical sampling bias and its implications for conservation priorities in Africa

Aim To design and apply statistical tests for measuring sampling bias in the raw data used to the determine priority areas for conservation, and to discuss their impact on conservation analyses for the region. Location Sub‐Saharan Africa. Methods An extensive data set comprising 78,083 vouchered locality records for 1068 passerine birds in sub‐Saharan Africa has been assembled. Using geographical information systems, we designed and applied two tests to determine if sampling of these taxa was biased. First, we detected possible biases because of accessibility by measuring the proximity of each record to cities, rivers and roads. Second, we quantified the intensity of sampling of each species inside and surrounding proposed conservation priority areas and compared it with sampling intensity in non‐priority areas. We applied statistical tests to determine if the distribution of these sampling records deviated significantly from random distributions. Results The analyses show that the location and intensity of collecting have historically been heavily influenced by accessibility. Sampling localities show dense, significant aggregation around city limits, and along rivers and roads. When examining the collecting sites of each individual species, the pattern of sampling has been significantly concentrated within and immediately surrounding areas now designated as conservation priorities. Main conclusions Assessment of patterns of species richness and endemicity at the scale useful for establishing conservation priorities, below the continental level, undoubtedly reflects biases in taxonomic sampling. This is especially problematic for priorities established using the criterion of complementarity because the estimated spatial costs of this approach are highly sensitive to sampling artefacts. Hence such conservation priorities should be interpreted with caution proportional to the bias found. We argue that conservation priority setting analyses require (1) statistical tests to detect these biases, and (2) data treatment to reflect species distribution rather than patterns of collecting effort.     

Consistency and use of information about threats in the participatory process for identification of priority conservation areas in the Brazilian Amazon

Despite the increasing number of scientific papers on the subject, conservation planning has failed to actively prioritise the creation of new protected areas. Strategies proposed to increase the creation of new protected areas based on conservation plans include broad stakeholder participation in decision-making processes in order to include their concerns and facilitate social acceptance of proposed actions. However, there are controversial views about the effectiveness of stakeholder participation. The quality of the decision depends both on the information used by stakeholders and on how it is used, so it is necessary to evaluate both these aspects of a decision-making process. Threats are intrinsically related to conservation decisions because they are more easily understood by people than biodiversity values, and they can affect both decisions and outcomes of conservation actions. This article analyses how information about threats was used in the decision-making process conducted by the Brazilian Government in 2006 to indicate priority areas for the conservation of the Amazon biome. We first verified the consistency of the information on threats attributed by stakeholders to these new priority areas, and then assessed whether the existence, levels and types of threats influenced the choice of areas for conservation. The results showed that there were some successes in recognising threats, but also many inconsistencies, especially in assigning levels of intensity for some types of threats such as fishing. The decision-making process also did not fully use available information to indicate areas for conservation. The lack of understanding on the motivation behind these inconsistencies could suggest the presence of political opportunism. A more quantitative approach to assigning priorities is needed: one that is less dependent on the individual input of stakeholders and more accurately reflects the actual emergency status of proposed areas. This indicates that greater effort should be allocated to combining a participatory approach with a robust decision support system.     

The national responsibility approach to setting conservation priorities—Recommendations for its use

The implementation of conservation strategies for species and habitats is frequently hampered by the availability of the necessary resources. These should be prioritized and focused on those species and habitats most in need, but also in regard to the importance of their distribution in a certain region, country or other administrative unit. In that perspective, the concept of national responsibilities (NR) is a recently developed tool to support priority setting. It captures the impact of the loss of a particular species or habitat within the focal region (usually a country) may have on the global persistence of that species or habitat type. Although the method consists of a few simple steps and is not very demanding in regard to data availability per species and habitat type, it is still impossible to determine NRs for all species and habitats. Here, we focus on the difficulties in determining NRs due to missing distribution data, varying interpretations of definitions especially in respect to habitat types, and differences in data formats and maps using European examples of these data limitations and sources of bias. These include artificially enlarged distribution areas resulting from grid cells being reported more than once, gridded shapefiles stretching into the sea or into other biogeographic regions, and differences in the size and the shape of grid cells and hence the resolution of maps. While focusing on European examples, these sources of bias are also relevant for conservation efforts on a global scale. Our analysis stresses the importance of quickly improving data quality, availability and comparability to render conservation more efficient. We give policy relevant examples on how the NR approach can be applied, e.g. how to help attributing budgets to poorer countries, on which species and habitats to focus limited monitoring resources, and how to consider newly emerging diseases. Generally, our analyses suggests (i) to develop clear global data standards, (ii) to regularly assess data to keep up with advances in data handling, and (iii) to use downscaling approaches for biodiversity data to a higher resolution for reducing the impact of bias to a negligible level together with improving the overall quality of distribution data for conservation purposes.     

Unprotecting the rare species: a niche‐based gap analysis for odonates in a core Cerrado area

Aim We evaluated Odonata distribution data and predicted the compositional resemblance based on niche‐based species distribution models to analyse the following questions: (1) How is estimated species richness distributed, and how can it be preserved under the actual network of conservation units (a gap analysis approach)? (2) How is the estimated odonate beta diversity distributed, and is there a better distribution of conservation units (a priority setting approach)? (3) Is the probability of being under protection a function of the potential species range size? and (4) Will the current conservation network proposals protect odonate taxa? Location Central Brazil in a core Cerrado area. Methods We generated odonate species distribution predictions based on MaxEnt and maps derived from estimated species richness, beta diversity and gap analysis for all species predicted to occur in the study area. Then, we compared these maps with current conservation units, land‐use patterns and proposals for the establishment of conservation units. Results Raw odonate species records provided limited utility for setting conservation priorities without the use of niche‐based models. However, area under the receiver operating curve (AUC) values were characterized by substantial variation that was related to the number of records. No current conservation units overlapped the areas with higher predicted richness and beta diversity, and in general, conservation units were not preserving restricted/rare species. There was a direct linear correlation between species range size and the proportion of its range protected in the current network of conservation units. Finally, we identified three areas with high odonate beta diversity where conservationist actions should be implemented. Main conclusions Current conservation units and future suggested areas do not overlap regions with high conservation values for odonates. Conservation units protect species at random, and the level of protection has a direct relationship with species range size; thus, wide‐range species are expected to be more protected than restricted or threatened species.     

An enlarged European Union challenges priority settings in conservation

Biodiversity is declining worldwide under increasing human pressure. Since the location of and the threats are unevenly distributed and the resources available for conservation are limited, prioritization is essential to reduce the losses. Most conservation efforts until now proved to be ineffective in stopping the present worldwide decline of threatened species. We focus on the European Union (EU) after the repeated enlargements in the last decade, from 15 to 27 countries, by considering the present conservation priorities that have shifted towards a continental scale approach. The situation in the EU indicates that despite the differences in wealth across countries, there are no significant differences in the number and surface of protected areas between them, so re-evaluating conservation priorities at a continental scale and a reallocation of funds is required. A major limitation in priority settings for conservation is data availability. We recommend including in the decision process data provided by phylogeographic studies. This will prevent the decline of populations and species with evolutionary potential from centres of speciation and climate refugia. Recent EU members from central and eastern Europe still retain high biodiversity with a rather good conservation status. A large number of areas with high evolutionary potential identified by phylogeographic studies are located there and should be considered priorities within the context of global changes, as a proactive approach. We recommend a periodic re-evaluation of the status of species and habitats based on current research results, harmonization between the priority species listed in the conventions, directives and Red Lists at both EU and national levels.     

Separating risks from values in setting priorities for plant community conservation

Berg and colleagues, in this issue, describe a framework for assessing risks to biodiversity and setting conservation priorities in northeast Germany. Their method explicitly separates community endangerment from conservation value, and derives its plant communities from a sound regional classification. It could be improved by incorporating ecological processes into risk assessment, and socio‐political constraints, economic costs and the likelihood of success into priority setting.