National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America.
Graduate Program on the Environment, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2019 Jan 9;14(1):e0209619. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0209619. eCollection 2019.
Single species conservation unites disparate partners for the conservation of one species. However, there are widespread concerns that single species conservation biases conservation efforts towards charismatic species at the expense of others. Here we investigate the extent to which sage grouse (Centrocercus sp.) conservation, the largest public-private conservation effort for a single species in the US, provides protections for other species from localized and landscape-scale threats. We compared the coverage provided by sage grouse Priority Areas for Conservation (PACs) to 81 sagebrush-associated vertebrate species distributions with potential coverage under multi-species conservation prioritization generated using the decision support tool Zonation. PACs. We found that the current PAC prioritization approach was not statistically different from a diversity-based prioritization approach and covers 23.3% of the landscape, and 24.8%, on average, of the habitat of the 81 species. The proportion of each species distribution at risk was lower inside PACs as compared to the region as a whole, even without management (land use change 30% lower, cheatgrass invasion 19% lower). Whether or not bias away from threat represents the most efficient use of conservation effort is a matter of considerable debate, though may be pragmatic in this landscape where capacity to address these threats is limited. The approach outlined here can be used to evaluate biological equitability of protections provided by flagship species in other settings.
单一物种保护将不同的合作伙伴联合起来，共同保护一个物种。然而，人们普遍担心，单一物种保护会使保护工作偏向于有魅力的物种，而牺牲其他物种。在这里，我们调查了在美国，为单一物种进行的最大规模的公私合作保护——叉角羚（Centrocercus sp.）保护，在多大程度上为其他物种提供了免受局部和景观规模威胁的保护。我们比较了优先保护区（PACs）对 81 种与山艾树有关的脊椎动物物种分布的覆盖范围，以及使用决策支持工具 Zonation 生成的多物种保护优先级排序的潜在覆盖范围。我们发现，目前的 PAC 优先级排序方法在统计学上与基于多样性的优先级排序方法没有区别，覆盖了 23.3%的景观，平均覆盖了 81 种物种栖息地的 24.8%。与整个地区相比，每个物种分布的风险比例在 PAC 内较低，即使没有管理（土地利用变化低 30%，糙枝芨芨草入侵低 19%）。这种保护工作是否存在偏离威胁的偏向，是否代表了最有效的利用保护工作，这是一个相当有争议的问题，尽管在这种能力有限的情况下，这种方法可能是务实的。这里概述的方法可以用于评估在其他情况下，旗舰物种提供的保护在生物公平性方面的效果。
