representation of global and national conservation priorities by colombias protected area network代表全球和国家保护优先的哥伦比亚的保护区网络.pdfVIP

Representation of Global and National Conservation Priorities by Colombia’s Protected Area Network 1 2 German Forero-Medina *, Lucas Joppa 1 Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America, 2 Microsoft Research, Cambridge, United Kingdom Abstract Background: How do national-level actions overlap with global priorities for conservation? Answering this question is especially important in countries with high and unique biological diversity like Colombia. Global biodiversity schemes provide conservation guidance at a large scale, while national governments gazette land for protection based on a combination of criteria at regional or local scales. Information on how a protected area network represents global and national conservation priorities is crucial for finding gaps in coverage and for future expansion of the system. Methodology/Principal Findings: We evaluated the agreement of Colombia’s protected area network with global conservation priorities, and the extent to which the network reflects the country’s biomes, species richness, and common environmental and physical conditions. We used this information to identify priority biomes for conservation. We find the dominant strategy in Colombia has been a proactive one, allocating the highest proportion of protected land on intact, difficult to access and species rich areas like the Amazon. Threatened and unique areas are disproportionately absent from Colombia’s protected lands. We highlight six biomes in Colombia as conservation priorities that should be considered in any