Conserve Map: A Geospatial Decision Framework for Prioritizing Wildlife Conservation Areas

Abstract

The number of conservation sites that might be considered eligible may exceed the available conservation resources, and the criteria used for deciding which habitats to prioritize frequently rely on partial records of species or inconsistent coverage of field surveys and/or administrative convenience rather than biological conservation values. Conserve Map is a planning tool that was proposed as an approach to prioritizing wildlife conservation areas, using it to provide a single ranking of each area that is comparative for conservation effort that could be applied by conservation planners. The framework is based on recent advances in ecosystem-service hotspot mapping, stepping-stone habitat identification, spatial conservation prioritization for regional planning, and genus-level vertebrate prioritization in the Neotropics, which have all established that multiple layers of biology can generate more defensible priority rankings than can a single-criterion approach. Conserve Map has not yet been used in a conservation planning decision, and is likely to be most valuable as a transparent and repeatable way to prioritize candidate sites, rather than as a substitute for conservation biologists' field judgment. The framework is recommended to be tested with real prioritization decisions with various taxa and regions.