Setting conservation priorities for the Moroccan herpetofauna: the utility of regional red lists J uan M. Pleguezuelos,JosE´ C. Brito,Soum´I A F ahd,Mo´ nica F eriche J osE´ A. Mateo,Gregorio M oreno-Rueda,Ricardo R eques and X avier S antos Abstract We assess the national conservation status of the Introduction amphibians and reptiles of Morocco by applying the IUCN Red List Criteria at the national level and assess its utility he conservation status of species is one of the most as a planning tool to establish regional priorities for con- Twidely used indicators for assessing an ecosystem’s 2006 servation. We rely on the accessory data accompanying wealth (Butchart et al., ), and the IUCN Red List of 2010 regional red lists, mainly distribution range and habitats Threatened Species (IUCN, b) is widely recognized used by, and threats affecting, species of conservation as the most comprehensive way to evaluate conservation 2006 2007 concern. We also correlated some natural history traits to status (Rodrigues et al., ; Miller et al., ). The Red examine the nature and causes of the risk of extinction. List, although with several limitations (Possingham et al., 2002 With 13 species of amphibians (31% regionally threatened) ), has become an increasingly powerful tool in setting and 99 species of reptiles (14% regionally threatened), priorities for the allocation of effort and funds for bio- 2004 Morocco is one of the Mediterranean countries with the diversity conservation (Trousdale & Gregory, ). In 2008 highest diversity of herpetofauna, mainly because of the addition, the Red List Criteria (IUCN, ), although high percentage of endemism (amphibians 31%, reptiles designed to be applied at a global scale, have inspired several 24%). The relative frequencies of threatened species were authorities to apply the procedure nationally (Pinchera & 1997 2005 found to be contingent on both taxonomic group and hab- Boitani, ; Eaton et al., ). Assessment for national red itat. The overwhelming importance of the threats of small lists could be useful because it provides the global Red List 2001 range and number of habitats used by species is different with valuable local information (Ga¨rdenfors et al., ), it is 2000 from the threats to the same species at the global level; this vital to conservation globally (Rodrı´guez et al., ), and demonstrates the usefulness of national or regional anal- the use of standardized criteria, adapted from the IUCN Red yses of conservation status for setting conservation prior- List Criteria, offers the possibility of universally comparable 2007 ities. The importance of regional assessment derives from assessments (Miller et al., ). Despite the interest in the fact that the boundaries set for conservation manage- constructing regional red lists, however, there has been 2001 ment are mainly political rather than biogeographical. limited testing of this application (Ga¨rdenfors, )orof the comparison between lists at the national and global levels Keywords Amphibians, conservation, crocodiles, Morocco, (but see Milner-Gulland et al., 2006). Because of lack of staff herpetofauna, Red List, regional red lists, reptiles or funds assessment of the national conservation status of plants and animals has failed, particularly in developing This paper contains supplementary material that can be countries (Ascher & Healy, 1990). However, some of these found online at http://journals.cambridge.org countries harbour the most important biodiversity hotspots (Myers et al., 2000) and, because of socio-economic con- straints, have many threatened species (Hoffmann, 2004). The conservation status of the amphibians and reptiles JUAN M. PLEGUEZUELOS (Corresponding author), MO´ NICA FERICHE and GREGORIO MORENO-RUEDA* Departamento de Biologı´a Animal, Facultad de of the Mediterranean Basin has been assessed at the global Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, E-18071 Granada, Spain. E-mail level (Cox et al., 2006) but the herpetofauna of Morocco [email protected] exhibit some characteristics that merit particular attention. JOSE´ C. BRITO CIBIO, Instituto de Cieˆncias Agra´rias Vairao, Vairao, Portugal Compared to other Mediterranean countries Morocco has SOUMI´A FAHD De´partement de Biologie, Faculte´ des Sciences, Universite´ a high diversity of terrestrial reptile species, the highest per- Abdelmalek Essaddi, Tetuan, Morocco centage of endemic reptile species, and the highest number JOSE´ A. MATEO Lagartario La Gomera, Valle Gran Rey—La Gomera (S/C of European relict reptile species. Morocco also harbours Tenerife), Spain centres of diversity of some reptile genera (Acanthodactylus, RICARDO REQUES Estacio´n Biolo´gica de Don˜ana, CSIC, Seville, Spain Chalcides and Blanus). XAVIER SANTOS Departament de Biologia Animal, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain The primary function of the IUCN Red List is to assess the extinction risk of species globally (IUCN, 2008). The *Also at: KLIVV, O¨ sterreischische Academie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, Austria data presented in the Red List include information collected Received 15 May 2009. Revision requested 16 June 2009. to support the assessments (distribution and habitats of, Accepted 26 June 2009. and threats to, the taxa assessed), and this information ª 2010 Fauna & Flora International, Oryx, 44(4), 501–508 doi:10.1017/S0030605310000992 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.8, on 27 Sep 2021 at 18:58:48, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605310000992 502 J. M. Pleguezuelos et al. provides a baseline for setting conservation priorities 2 we followed the Habitats Authority File and the Threats Type (Rodrigues et al., 2006). Using this information for sum- Authority File of the IUCN (IUCN, 2010a). A species is marizing biological characteristics of species at risk, key considered Threatened when it appeared listed in one of the habitats for conservation, and more generalized threats, IUCN categories of Vulnerable, Endangered or Critically would address one of the shortfalls of the IUCN Red List, Endangered, according to the criteria of Population Reduction which is its lack of suitability for setting recovery actions for (A), Geographic Range (B), Small Population Size and Decline the greatest number of species and habitats (Noss, 2000). (C) and Very Small or Restricted Population (D; IUCN, 2008). Analyses within the geopolitical limits of a country are For a regional assessment it is important to consider the useful (Czech & Krausman, 1997) because most conserva- proportion of the global distribution that occurs within the tion decisions and budgets are planned independently by region (IUCN, 2003), and this was estimated for Morocco country (Rodrigues & Gaston, 2002; Samways, 2003). from Cox et al. (2006) using the geographical information We explored the data gathered during the process of system ArcView v. 3.2 (ESRI, Redlands, USA; Appendix 2). performing a national red list of the amphibians and We relied where possible on published information but also reptiles of Morocco to determine (1) the extinction risk of on our experience researching amphibians and reptiles in Moroccan amphibians and reptiles at the national level, Morocco during the past 2 decades (Pearman, 2001). The and to identify (2) the groups facing the highest extinction distribution of the main habitats in Morocco was obtained risk, (3) the habitats that hold the most threatened species, from 14 months (1999–2000)of1-km resolution data ac- (4) the most significant threats, and (5) the relationships quired by the VEGETATION sensor of the SPOT 4 satellite, between the threatened status of species and their natural delivered as multichannel daily mosaics (GLC, 2003).We 2 history. We also sought to establish whether threatened made statistical comparisons (with v tests) of the frequen- Moroccan species share some of the traits reported to predict cies of categories, habitats and threats between Morocco and species vulnerability (Webb et al., 2002). This analysis will the Mediterranean Basin only for reptiles because of the assist conservation planning in Morocco and provide in- small sample size for amphibians. Because of unbalanced formation about two groups of terrestrial vertebrates fre- sample size, expected frequencies were adjusted to the lesser quently neglected in conservation policy and consistently sample size of the Moroccan fauna. To examine any po- underrepresented in networks of protected areas (Milner- tential relationship between natural history traits and Gulland et al., 2006). threatened status we were constrained to those few traits available: (1) distribution breadth, assessed by the number of 1 50 000 Methods : , Moroccan topographic sheets with a record of presence in Bons & Geniez (1996), corrected with Geniez We assessed the conservation status of the 13 amphibian et al. (2004); (2) number of IUCN minor habitats (the second species and 101 reptile species (99 extant plus two Re- level for habitat type in the Habitats Authority File of the gionally Extinct) known to occur in Morocco (Western IUCN; see Appendix 2); (3) body size, measured as the 2 Sahara included; total area 710,850 km ). The initial species average snout–vent length for adults of the largest sex; (4) list was compiled from two distribution atlases that cover reproductive output, measured as mean annual number of the area entirely (Bons & Geniez, 1996) or partially (Geniez eggs or newborn. et al., 2004), although we considered