Integrating economic costs and biological traits into global conservation priorities for carnivores.
BACKGROUND
Prioritization schemes usually highlight species-rich areas, where many species are at imminent risk of extinction. To be ecologically relevant these schemes should also include species biological traits into area-setting methods. Furthermore, in a world of limited funds for conservation, conservation action is constrained by land acquisition costs. Hence, including economic costs into conservation priorities can substantially improve their conservation cost-effectiveness.


RESULTS
We examined four global conservation scenarios for carnivores based on the joint mapping of economic costs and species biological traits. These scenarios identify the most cost-effective priority sets of ecoregions, indicating best investment opportunities for safeguarding every carnivore species, and also establish priority sets that can maximize species representation in areas harboring highly vulnerable species. We compared these results with a scenario that minimizes the total number of ecoregions required for conserving all species, irrespective of other factors. We found that cost-effective conservation investments should focus on 41 ecoregions highlighted in the scenario that consider simultaneously both ecoregion vulnerability and economic costs of land acquisition. Ecoregions included in priority sets under these criteria should yield best returns of investments since they harbor species with high extinction risk and have lower mean land cost.


CONCLUSIONS
Our study highlights ecoregions of particular importance for the conservation of the world's carnivores defining global conservation priorities in analyses that encompass socioeconomic and life-history factors. We consider the identification of a comprehensive priority-set of areas as a first step towards an in-situ biodiversity maintenance strategy.
Loyola
Rafael Dias
RD
Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil. avispa@gmail.com
Oliveira-Santos
Luiz Gustavo Rodrigues
LG
Almeida-Neto
Mário
M
Nogueira
Denise Martins
DM
Kubota
Umberto
U
Diniz-Filho
José Alexandre Felizola
JA
Lewinsohn
Thomas Michael
TM
D000818:Animals; D002335:Carnivora / Q000254:growth & development*; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics*; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D010934:Planning Techniques