Terrestrial Vertebrate Biological Diversity in Twelve Andes-Amazon Conservation Mosaics

Scaling up area-based conservation to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework’s 30x30 target: The role of Nature’s Strongholds

“…In both Central Africa and Amazonia, the definition and identification of strongholds was aided by their being embedded within larger "Key Landscapes for Conservation" (KLCs), which had previously been identified in studies supported by the European Union (EU) [80,81]. In addition, to inform their philanthropy, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF) has identified a suite of conservation landscapes in Amazonia [82] that generally align with the EU analysis. The resulting landscapes that contained identified strongholds were large.…”

“…Nature's Strongholds in Amazonia were identified using similar criteria to those for Central Africa. To delineate strongholds, we referred to the EU "Larger than Jaguars" conservation strategy for Latin America [81], which defined KLCs for Amazonia, and to the GBMF-identified conservation landscapes in the Amazon basin [82].…”

“…The idea that Nature's Strongholds and conservation landscapes are important for biodiversity conservation in the Amazon basin is suggested by strongholds having a higher ecological integrity, which infers a higher biodiversity value than the matrices in which they are embedded, and conservation landscapes (strongholds and surrounding matrices) have a higher ecological integrity than the Amazon basin as a whole (see S2 Text and S5 Table ). Another proxy for biodiversity and its distribution relative to strongholds and conservation landscapes is provided by Wallace and colleagues [82]. Although these authors did not focus on strongholds per se, they examined the geographic distribution of amphibian, mammal, and bird diversity in the GBMF conservation landscapes (termed "mosaics," as distinct from Brazilian mosaicos).…”