Selecting key areas for conservation at the regional level: the case of the globally ‘Near Threatened’ Cinereous Vulture Aegypius monachus in south-east Portugal

Abstract

SummarySince the resources available for nature conservation tend to be very limited, localised conservation actions are often the only feasible management option. Therefore, we must select key areas where these actions will be most effective. Here we used Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) to integrate various variables in a GIS environment and identify key areas for implementing conservation actions benefiting Cinereous Vultures Aegypius monachusin south-east Portugal. Through a bibliographic search, we selected four main variables and sub-variables related to land use, food availability, disturbance and topography. These were weighted for their relative importance using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and combined using WLC to obtain suitability maps for the best nesting and foraging sites for Cinereous Vultures. Overall, the study areas show moderate to high suitability as foraging areas for the species, but only a few small patches seem suitable as nesting sites. The use of GIS-based decision support systems, such as WLC, together with an objective method for weighting variables, like the AHP, allows for the integration of large amounts of cartographic information into suitability maps that can easily be used to select key areas for conservation at the regional level.

Influence of Anthropogenic Noise for Predicting Cinereous Vulture Nest Distribution

“…This is sensitive to disturbances caused by humans; it is considered to be an indicator of quality of natural ecosystems. Thus, cinereous vulture is considered an umbrella species [24,25]. Cinereous vultures nest on mature trees in woods on slopes far away from human presence [8,26,27] and from roads [24,[28][29][30][31][32][33], since an important variable in the breeding success of this bird is the absence of any human disturbance [34].…”