Abstract
Suitable surrogates are critical for identifying optimal priority conservation areas (PCAs) to protect regional biodiversity. This study explored the efficiency of using endangered plants and animals as surrogates for identifying PCAs at the county level in Yunnan, southwest China. We ran the Dobson algorithm under three surrogate scenarios at 75% and 100% conservation levels and identified four types of PCAs. Assessment of the protection efficiencies of the four types of PCAs showed that endangered plants had higher surrogacy values than endangered animals but that the two were not substitutable; coupled endangered plants and animals as surrogates yielded a higher surrogacy value than endangered plants or animals as surrogates; the plant-animal priority areas (PAPAs) was the optimal among the four types of PCAs for conserving both endangered plants and animals in Yunnan. PAPAs could well represent overall species diversity distribution patterns and overlap with critical biogeographical regions in Yunnan. Fourteen priority units in PAPAs should be urgently considered as optimizing Yunnan’s protected area system. The spatial pattern of PAPAs at the 100% conservation level could be conceptualized into three connected conservation belts, providing a valuable reference for optimizing the layout of the in situ protected area system in Yunnan.
Highlights
Has critical conservation gaps, i.e., some biodiversity hotspots or priority areas are not protected adequately and some endangered national key protected species are not covered by any protected area
The proportion of endangered animals protected by Plant priority areas (PPAs) was 72.9% at the 75% conservation level and 87.5% at the 100% conservation level, while the proportion of endangered plants protected by animal priority areas (APAs) was only 41.7% and 77.6% at the two conservation levels, respectively
At the 75% conservation level, the proportion of overall endangered species conserved by PPAs was 12.5% higher than the proportion conserved by APAs
Summary
Has critical conservation gaps, i.e., some biodiversity hotspots or priority areas are not protected adequately and some endangered national key protected species are not covered by any protected area. Identifying optimal PCAs for conserving both plants and animals in Yunnan and improving the current Yunnan protected area system (YPAS)[29,33] are both extremely urgent. This study selected non-uniform counties in Yunnan as the primary priority unit and used endangered plants and animals as surrogates to identify optimal PCAs for protecting endangered species in Yunnan in a cost-effective manner. Through exploring the degree to which each type of PCAs was able to represent endangered plants or/and animals, we analysed the effectiveness of each surrogate scenario and determined the optimal scenario and its corresponding PCAs. We discussed the representativeness and conservation gaps of the optimal PCAs and the resulting implications for optimizing the current YPAS
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