Connectivity and strategic opportunity to promote the establishment of private-owned protected areas in the Atlantic Forest (Serra do Mar and Bahia regions)

Abstract

Private-owned protected areas (PPAs) can help to halt the biodiversity decline and be widely adopted in practice because of their ease of implementation. However, their effectiveness in the highly fragmented landscape may differ between regions, and therefore implementation of potential PPAs should be preceded by detailed spatial analyses of ecological connectivity. Here, we identify forest remnants that are connectivity priorities and represent opportunities for the potential establishment of additional PPAs. The study focuses on two biogeographical subregions (“Serra do Mar” and “Bahia”) of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, a biome that has been eroded by large-scale fragmentation. Our study shows that none of the forest remnants had a high opportunity for future PPAs in Bahia, even though one-third of the total area was identified as priorities. In contrast, 30% of forest remnants in the Serra do Mar had a high opportunity for future PPAs out of a total of 48% of forest remnants considered priorities. Therefore, our results suggest that the Serra do Mar has a large potential for the development of a network of PPAs in the future, which might not be the case in Bahia. Our findings highlight the need to combine the underlying natural connectivity of a study system and opportunities to implement new private protected areas as key ingredients for a rapidly growing protected area network.