Quantifying the National Significance of Local Areas for Regional Conservation Planning: North Carolina’s Mountain Treasures

R Belote,G Irwin

doi:10.3390/land6020035

Abstract

Conservation scientists recognize that additional protected areas are needed to maintain biological diversity and ecological processes. As regional conservation planners embark on recommending additional areas for protection in formal ecological reserves, it is important to evaluate candidate lands for their role in building a resilient protected areas system of the future. Here, we evaluate North Carolina’s Mountain Treasures with respect to their (1) ecological integrity, (2) role in connecting existing core protected areas, (3) potential to diversify the ecosystem representation of reserves, and (4) role in maintaining hotspots of biologically-rich areas that are not well protected. Mountain Treasures represent a citizen inventory of roadless areas and serve as candidates for elevated levels of conservation protection on U.S. federal lands. We compared Mountain Treasures to other candidate lands throughout the country to evaluate their potential national significance. While the Mountain Treasures tended to be more impacted by human modifications than other roadless areas, they are as important as other roadless areas with respect to their role in connecting existing protected areas and diversifying representation of ecosystems in conservation reserves. However, Mountain Treasures tended to have a much higher biodiversity priority index than other roadless areas leading to an overall higher composite score compared to other roadless areas. Our analysis serves as an example of how using broad-scale datasets can help conservation planners assess the national significance of local areas.

Highlights

For over a century, conservation efforts have led to the establishment of hundreds of protected areas covering millions of hectares in the United States
Ecological integrity, Mountain Treasures fall between existing protected areas and maintain an overall connectivity value similar to other inventoried roadless areas (IRAs) (Figures 2B and 4)
Bald and Bald Mountain are above 90% of all U.S roadless lands in the lower 48 United States, and sixteen Mountain Treasures possess connectivity values greater than 75% of all designated roadless areas (Figure S2)

Summary

Introduction

Conservation efforts have led to the establishment of hundreds of protected areas covering millions of hectares in the United States. These protected areas form the foundation for strategies to protect biological diversity and ecological processes upon which people and other species depend [1]. Recent calls have been made to add to the system of protected areas by establishing an ecologically connected network that is more inclusive of ecosystems and species currently under-represented in protected areas [3,4] In response to these calls, Belote et al (2017) [5] conducted a national assessment

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