Integrating conservation planning and landuse planning in urban landscapes

Abstract

The rapid growth of cities around the world is now seen as a major contributor to global biodiversity loss and many governments include biodiversity conservation as an explicit policy goal. To help prevent further loss of biodiversity, there is an urgent need for more strategic approaches to conservation planning in urban environments based on a scientific understanding of landscape patterns, species requirements and development pressures. In this study, we demonstrate the use of new conservation planning tools to better integrate information on threatened species into landuse planning. We present a case study in the Greater Melbourne area that utilises the Zonation conservation planning tool with data for 30 threatened fauna species. We perform a multi-species spatial prioritisation that incorporates species-specific connectivity requirements and demonstrate the use of this information in a number of landuse planning contexts. First, we quantitatively assess the differences between Melbourne's current conservation areas with the locations prioritised by Zonation and determine priority areas for their extension. We then show how the prioritisation can be used in decisions regarding Melbourne's Urban Growth Boundary and in rezoning land for development. Finally, we demonstrate how the prioritisation can be used to identify areas of conservation significance within individual developments that account for the wider landscape context. These results demonstrate how conservation planning tools can be better integrated into the different stages of landuse planning for future urban growth.