Research letter: Incorporating climate change into conservation planning: Identifying priority areas across a species’ range

Mary E Blair,Karl Didier,Eric W Sanderson,Richard G Pearson,Robert A Rose,Eleanor J Sterling,Peter J Ersts,Kent H Redford

doi:10.21425/f5fbg12668

Abstract

Theoretical and practical approaches associated with conservation biogeography, including ecological niche modeling, have been applied to the difficult task of determining how to incorporate climate change into conservation prioritization methodologies. Most studies have focused on identifying species that are most at risk from climate change, but here we asked, which areas within a species’ range does climate change threaten most? We explored methods for incorporating climate change within a range-wide conservation planning framework, using a case study of jaguars (Panthera onca). We used ecological niche models to estimate exposure to climate change across the range of the jaguar and incorporated these estimates into habitat quality scores for re-prioritization of high-priority areas for jaguar conservation. Methods such as these are needed to guide prioritization of geographically-specific actions for conservation across a species’ range.

Highlights

The growing field of conservation biogeography uses theories, principles, and analyses to address problems related to the conservation of biodiversity (Ladle and Whittaker 2011)
We explore how frameworks focused on spatial priority setting across a species’ range, such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Species Conservation Strategy planning framework (IUCN/SSC 2008) or the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Range-Wide Priority Setting (RWPS; Medellin et al 2001, Sanderson et al 2002), could incorporate climate change
This work demonstrates a practical approach for incorporating future climate scenarios into existing range-wide conservation planning frameworks

Summary

Introduction

We explore how frameworks focused on spatial priority setting across a species’ range, such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Species Conservation Strategy planning framework (IUCN/SSC 2008) or the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Range-Wide Priority Setting (RWPS; Medellin et al 2001, Sanderson et al 2002), could incorporate climate change. Under these frameworks, conservation organizations or national governments have already prioritized species for conservation, using a range of criteria (SEMARNAT 2001, WCS 20111, IUCN 20122). The task at hand is not to identify which species are most vulnerable, but rather to identify which areas within a priority species’

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