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How Much of the Vertebrate Diversity of Sub-Saharan Africa Is Catered for by Recent Conservation Proposals?

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How Much of the Vertebrate Diversity of Sub-Saharan Africa Is Catered for by Recent Conservation Proposals? Biological Conservation 107 (2002) 327–339 www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon How much of the vertebrate diversity of sub-Saharan Africa is catered for by recent conservation proposals? Neil D. Burgessa,b,*, Carsten Rahbekc, Frank Wugt Larsenc, Paul Williamsd, Andrew Balmforda aConservation Biology Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK bConservation Science Programme, World Wildlife Fund-USA, 1250 24th Street NW, Washington, DC, USA cZoological Museum, Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100, Copenhagen Ø, Denmark dBiogeography and Conservation Laboratory, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK Received 19 October 2001; received in revised form 30 January 2002; accepted 31 January 2002 Abstract A database documenting the distribution of birds, mammals, amphibians and snakes across 1 latitude and longitude squares of mainland sub-Saharan Africa provides an opportunity to quantify how many of these vertebrates are potentially catered for by recent large-scale conservation proposals. Sets of priority areas proposed by BirdLife International, the World Wildlife Fund (USA), the World Conservation Union and the World Wide Fund for Nature, Conservation International, and the World Resources Institute contain between 45 and 93% of 3752 species of birds, mammals, snakes and amphibians breeding in this area. Gaps in the coverage of vertebrates were found in all large-scale proposals, and these are mapped. Most of the conservation pro- posals perform better than random selection of similar sized areas of Africa, with the proposals focused on species performing more efficiently than schemes based on large areas of intact habitat or process-related criteria. Four of the schemes approach the per- formance of a complementarity-based algorithm that aims to maximise the number of species captured within a given area of land, and which has been widely advocated as a tool for conservation planning. The reasons for this are discussed and the relevance of the results for conservation planning at coarse and fine scales are explained. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Vertebrates; Africa; Conservation; Biodiversity 1. Introduction Myers (1988, 1990) was the first to present a set of global priority areas by identifying 18 highly threatened Growing international concern over the scale of the ‘Hotspots’ containing 20% of the world’s plant species ongoing extinction of species and the scarcity of in only 0.5% of the land area. For Africa the work of resources available to prevent it from occurring (Pimm Myers built on an existing tradition of identifying cen- et al., 1995) has resulted in a spate of programmes tres of plant endemism (e.g. White, 1983; Brenan, 1978). aimed at identifying those areas where conservation Following this, BirdLife International used data on efforts could result in the maximum number of species birds to identify 221 Endemic Bird Areas worldwide being conserved. While some approaches have focused (ICBP, 1992); between them these areas contain the on countries as units for analysis (Mittermeier and entire breeding ranges of 20% of the world’s bird spe- Werner, 1988; WCMC, 1992; Caldecott et al., 1996; cies with ranges <50,000 km2 in only 2% of the global Mittermeier et al., 1997), attention in recent years has land surface. For Africa the analyses of BirdLife also shifted to large ecological rather than political units of built upon previous studies of bird richness and ende- land. Here we confine our attention to these ecologically mism patterns (e.g. Crowe and Crowe, 1982; Crowe, based units and investigate how well they capture spe- 1990). The World Wide Fund for Nature with the cies’ distributions. World Conservation Union, Conservation Interna- tional, the World Wildlife Fund (USA), and the World *Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-1223-336675. Resources Institute have all developed additional global E-mail address: [email protected] (N.D. Burgess). prioritisation schemes in the past few years. The World 0006-3207/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0006-3207(02)00071-X 328 N.D. Burgess et al. / Biological Conservation 107 (2002) 327–339 Wide Fund for Nature and the World Conservation used phylogenetic approaches to establishing conserva- Union (WWF and IUCN, 1994–1997) used expert ana- tion priorities across the region, which might provide lyses of plant distribution to identify 234 ‘‘first order’’ additional insights on areas of relictualisation or recent Centres of Plant Diversity. Conservation International speciation. Fjeldsa˚ (1994), Fjeldsa˚ and Lovett (1997) focused on plants as well in developing Myers’ pioneer- and Linder (1995) have made a start in this direction for ing analysis to identify 24 Hotspots, where ca. 46% of birds and plants, and if phylogenetic data were available the world’s plant species are found (Mittermeier et al., for other taxonomic groups across Africa, then this 1998, 1999; Myers et al., 2000). would provide a useful methodology for assessing As a complement to the Hotspots approach, Con- potential of conservation proposals to conserve evolu- servation International have identified three Major tionary history. Tropical Wilderness Areas, which are both species-rich Given that there are now several global priority sys- and retain >75% of their original vegetation cover tems in place, it is timely to assess how well they might (Mittermeier et al., 1998). World Wildlife Fund (USA) succeed in achieving the concerns of conservationists. used information from all biological groups to produce We use sub-Saharan Africa (the Afrotropical Realm) as a Global 200 list of Ecoregions, selected to represent our test area. For this geographical area we attempt to both species and biological phenomena within each of measure the success of the priority systems at addressing the world’s major habitat types (Olson and Dinerstein, a common concern of conservation biologists—the 1998). For Africa, further analyses of endemism and representation within conservation proposals of as species richness values of all Ecoregions has led to the many species as possible within a practically manage- identification of the most biologically distinctive Eco- able total area. regions (Underwood et al., 1999; WWF, unpublished For each priority system, we perform three identical data). Finally, World Resources Institute has identified tests to assess their performance at capturing species dis- 24 Frontier Forests—forest areas which are largely tributions. First, we identify the number of species pristine and where natural processes are thought to be included in each of the given schemes. Second, we continuing largely unchecked by human intervention determine those areas richest in species not represented (Bryant et al., 1997). in the proposed priority schemes. Third, we compare Part of the rationale behind most of these prioritisa- species capture by these different schemes against both tion approaches is that the priority areas identified random and systematic selection of land areas of com- should permit the conservation of a high proportion of parable size in sub-Saharan Africa. The systematic the world’s species, even for those areas identified using approach to area selection addresses variation in both one taxon group. Indeed, for several systems—the the biological richness and the biological distinctiveness Endemic Bird Areas, the Centres of Plant Diversity, and (or complementarity) of different candidate areas (see the most biologically distinctive Ecoregions—repre- Williams, 1998 for detailed explanation). sentation of species has been the overwhelming concern behind area selection. Other schemes give greater weight to broader concerns, such as the importance of main- 2. Methods taining large-scale biological phenomena (e.g. Olson and Dinerstein, 1998), or of selecting areas according to 2.1. Conservation priorities investigated how threatened they are (Mittermeier et al., 1998). For example, concerns about key ecological phenomena, We studied seven sets of conservation areas, running such as major migrations of large mammals, have been from those with a particular species conservation focus, incorporated in the selection of the Global 200 Eco- through to those with a focus on the conservation of regions (Olson and Dinerstein, 1998; WWF, unpublished extensive areas of spatially contiguous habitat free from data). Likewise, both Conservation International’s human disturbance. Major Tropical Wilderness Areas and World Resource Institute’s Frontier Forests have been chosen as areas BirdLife’s Endemic Bird Areas—regions with at least where natural vegetation is sufficiently extensive and two bird species with global breeding ranges of human settlement sufficiently sparse that major biologi- <50,000 km2; there are 22 Endemic Bird Areas in our cal processes continue with relatively little human inter- study area (for details see Stattersfield et al., 1998). It ference (Bryant et al., 1997; Mittermeier et al., 1998). has been argued that birds with restricted ranges are a At the other end of the threat spectrum, the need to good surrogate for overall biodiversity (ICBP, 1992; target areas under the greatest human pressure is reflec- Balmford and Long, 1995; Brooks et al. 2001a). ted in Conservation International’s Hotspot system World Wildlife Fund–USA’s most Biologically Dis- (Mittermeier et al., 1998; 1999), where, to be selected, tinctive Ecoregions—the top 20 out of 80 ecoregions ecosystems must have
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