Expanding Kenya's protected areas under the Convention on Biological Diversity to maximize coverage of plant diversity

Abstract

Biodiversity is highly valuable and critically threatened by anthropogenic degradation of the natural environment. In response, governments have pledged enhanced protected-area coverage, which requires scarce biological data to identify conservation priorities. To assist this effort, we mapped conservation priorities in Kenya based on maximizing alpha (species richness) and beta diversity (species turnover) of plant communities while minimizing economic costs. We used plant-cover percentages from vegetation surveys of over 2000 plots to build separate models for each type of diversity. Opportunity and management costs were based on literature data and interviews with conservation organizations. Species richness was predicted to be highest in a belt from Lake Turkana through Mount Kenya and in a belt parallel to the coast, and species turnover was predicted to be highest in western Kenya and along the coast. Our results suggest the expanding reserve network should focus on the coast and northeastern provinces of Kenya, where new biological surveys would also fill biological data gaps. Meeting the Convention on Biological Diversity target of 17% terrestrial coverage by 2020 would increase representation of Kenya's plant communities by 75%. However, this would require about 50 times more funds than Kenya has received thus far from the Global Environment Facility.

Assessing shortfalls and complementary conservation areas for national plant biodiversity in South Korea

“…It may be difficult for small-sized countries to achieve the Aichi targets and designate 17% of their terrestrial lands as protected areas, and conservation and management costs for large protected areas would be high for many developing countries [ 20 ]. Thus, determining what areas contribute the most conservation value could be an alternative goal in these instances.…”

“…For example, Scherer et al . [ 20 ] predicted alpha and beta diversity patterns using 1,893 plant species in Kenya and used Zonation to search for potential expansions of Kenya’s PAs. When species location records are available, Species Distribution Models (SDM; [ 21 ]) can be employed as inputs for Marxan.…”

Regional scalable priorities for national biodiversity and carbon conservation planning in Asia

“…Mechanisms for conservation across diverse and working landscapes, such as other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs), need to be developed, especially given that commodity extraction in Asia is one of the major drivers of continued regional habitat loss ( 59 ) and agricultural areas cannot be overlooked in effective regional conservation efforts. A lack of funds should be highlighted as a major barrier to complete completing conservation targets; thus, both additional funding from central bodies such as the GEF and stakeholders across multiple sectors (such as the private sector) are needed for regions where priorities exceed 30% of the national land area, including the development of supplemental frameworks, to provide alternate means of funding to support the protection of these areas over a longer term ( 70 ). Furthermore, enhancing awareness of the need for better synergies can reduce perverse incentives and ensure that targets from various UN conventions are implemented in a complementary manner and reduce trade-offs wherever possible, such as the synergistic priorities shown here.…”

Evaluating the effectiveness of Shennongjia National Nature Reserve based on the dynamics of forest carbon pools

“…Key words: Shennongjia National Nature Reserve; carbon sequestration; conservation effectiveness; forest ecosystem; carbon pool 建立自然保护区是维持生物多样性和生态系 统功能稳定的最有效方式 (Joppa et al, 2008;Pouzols et al, 2014) (Andam et al, 2008;Wu et al, 2011;Hill et al, 2015;Ren et al, 2015), 目前, 有关保护区保护成效 的研究大多集中于生物多样性保护方面 (Bruner et al, 2001;Rodrigues et al, 2004;Cao et al, 2015;Jenkins et al, 2015;Chen et al, 2017 (Tans et al, 1990;Dixon et al, 1994)。森林碳储量即便小幅度的 变动, 也可能影响整个大气CO 2 的浓度, 进而对陆 地生态系统的分布、组成、结构和功能产生影响 (Schimel et al, 2000)。 保护森林的固碳能力已成为自 然保护区的一项重要功能之一。 关于保护区保护森林固碳的成效, 目前仅开展 了少量研究 (Gaston et al, 2008;Willcock et al, 2016;Bowker et al, 2017;Scherer et al, 2017) 1990-2010 (1990-2000; 2000-2010) 0 …”