Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Cornell University, 159 Sapsucker Woods Road, Ithaca, New York, 14850, USA.
Wildlife Biology Program, University of Montana, 32 Campus Drive, Missoula, Montana, 59812, USA.
Ecol Appl. 2018 Jul;28(5):1354-1361. doi: 10.1002/eap.1739. Epub 2018 Jun 4.
Protected areas form the cornerstone of global efforts to conserve biodiversity. Most current methods for designing reserve networks focus on maximizing the representation of species, but with no assurance that those species will persist in the protected landscapes into the future. We present a new strategy for reserve design that combines metapopulation theory with spatial conservation prioritization to estimate conservation solutions that minimize extinction risk across numerous species simultaneously. Our framework optimizes the spatial configuration of reserves to maximize metapopulation persistence for an entire assemblage of species by accounting for both species representation and landscape connectivity. As a case study, we design a reserve network for 114 terrestrial mammal species in Indonesian New Guinea. Our approach builds on Marxan, the flagship representation-based reserve design tool, improving estimated persistence (metapopulation capacity) by an average of 4.6-fold across species, without increasing the socioeconomic cost. We suggest that enhancing species persistence, rather than protecting arbitrary proportions of species' ranges, should be the ultimate objective of conservation planning.
保护地是全球生物多样性保护努力的基石。大多数现有的保护区网络设计方法侧重于最大限度地提高物种的代表性，但并不能保证这些物种在未来的保护区景观中得以持续存在。我们提出了一种新的保护区设计策略，将物种的保护地设计策略与景观连通性相结合，以估计能够同时最小化多个物种灭绝风险的保护方案。我们的框架通过考虑物种的代表性和景观连通性，优化保护区的空间配置，以最大限度地提高整个物种集合的物种的保护地的持续存在性。作为一个案例研究，我们为印度尼西亚新几内亚的 114 种陆地哺乳动物设计了一个保护区网络。我们的方法以 Marxan 为基础，这是一种基于代表性的旗舰保护区设计工具，平均提高了物种的保护地持续存在性（物种的保护地能力）约 4.6 倍，而不会增加社会经济成本。我们建议，增强物种的保护地持续存在性，而不是保护任意比例的物种分布范围，应该成为保护规划的最终目标。
