Reconciling global mammal prioritization schemes into a strategy

Abstract

The huge conservation interest that mammals attract and the large datasets that have been collected on them have propelled a diversity of global mammal prioritization schemes, but no comprehensive global mammal conservation strategy. We highlight some of the potential discrepancies between the schemes presented in this theme issue, including: conservation of species or areas, reactive and proactive conservation approaches, conservation knowledge and action, levels of aggregation of indicators of trend and scale issues. We propose that recently collected global mammal data and many of the mammal prioritization schemes now available could be incorporated into a comprehensive global strategy for the conservation of mammals. The task of developing such a strategy should be coordinated by a super-partes, authoritative institution (e.g. the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN). The strategy would facilitate funding agencies, conservation organizations and national institutions to rapidly identify a number of short-term and long-term global conservation priorities, and act complementarily to achieve them.

The key elements of a comprehensive global mammal conservation strategy

“…systematic conservation planning [17], and conservation resource allocation [24]). Although these methods give sometimes contrasting results, they can provide complementary insights into a global species conservation strategy (potential ways to reconcile the methods are discussed in Rondinini et al [14]). Overall, in order to be relevant on the operational level, a global species conservation strategy must rely on prioritization methods based on the best available data in order to steer action.…”

“…Overall, in order to be relevant on the operational level, a global species conservation strategy must rely on prioritization methods based on the best available data in order to steer action. Whereas most effective action takes place at the local scale (and, accordingly, should be based on higher resolution, higher accuracy, local data), global coordination is needed for a global optimization of conservation action [14].…”

“…The Red List categories, EDGE scores, and latent extinction risk produce different results in terms of species priorities, but this is natural given that each metric has been developed to tackle different conservation issues: to prevent species extinctions; to minimize loss of mammalian evolutionary history; and to proactively conserve mammals that could be potentially threatened in the future. Each of them has, therefore, a potential role to play in meeting different, complementary, targets of a future global conservation strategy [14].…”

“…Information on threat is already available for more than 50 000 taxa from the IUCN Red List [13], but the spatial distributions of threats to species are poorly understood [22]. Threat data are necessary to identify priority species, but need to be complemented by data on conservation costs and the probability of success [14]. All data come with some degree of stated or unstated uncertainty attached to them [23], therefore methods to process data while taking uncertainty into account are necessary to obtain robust results in terms of targets, priorities and quantification of success.…”

“…As of today, there is not yet a comprehensive, widely agreed, global conservation strategy to tackle mammal decline. New datasets on the taxonomy [10], phylogeny [11], life-history traits [12], conservation status, threats, ecology and distribution [8,13] provide now an opportunity to strategically plan for mammal conservation in the coming decades [14].…”