Monday, June 4, 2007 - 2:30 PM
34

Measuring conservation status and potential impacts from conservation strategies

Jonathan Higgins, The Nature Conservancy, 8 Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60603-3318

Limited conservation resources should support the most effective strategies.  These strategies should be applied to places, processes and scales that will have the largest impacts on biodiversity.  Important steps to consider before investing extensively in conservation strategies include defining goals for conservation success, and evaluating levels and patterns of biodiversity integrity, threats and current conservation management activities.  These can be referred to as conservation measures.  The Nature Conservancy is using these measures to estimate where biodiversity is reasonably secure to persist, and identify opportunities to expand and enhance such security. We are applying measures at regional scales to estimate current levels of security, and identify the gaps towards meeting goals for conservation success. We can also evaluate the potential scope of the impacts that proposed strategies may have in transitioning biodiversity into more secure status.  This can inform the conservation return on investment for an array of strategies.  I will highlight benefits, limitations and challenges of applying this framework to aquatic biodiversity at regional scales.


Web Page: www.conservationgateway.org

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