TY - JOUR

T1 - Restoration planning to guide Aichi targets in a megadiverse country

AU - Tobón, Wolke

AU - Urquiza-Haas, Tania

AU - Koleff, Patricia

AU - Schröter, Matthias

AU - Ortega-Álvarez, Rubén

AU - Campo, Julio

AU - Lindig-Cisneros, Roberto

AU - Sarukhán, José

AU - Bonn, Aletta

N1 - Funding Information: We thank all participants in the workshop “Identificación de Prioridades de Restauración Ecológica en México” (May 2014) who provided expertise and supported the priority assessment: A. Aguilar, R. Águilar, V. Águilar, S. Anta, V. Arriaga, J. Carabias, G. Chapela, C. Cortés, G. García Méndez, I. Pisanty, S. Ruiz, I. Trejo, and D. Uribe. Funding for the workshop was provided by Conanp. Our conceptual framework was greatly improved by suggestions and comments from H. Cotler and M. González-Espinosa. Special thanks to J. Alarcón and M. Kolb for supporting programing issues and providing data and to our colleagues at Conabio. Also, we thank 3 anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback that greatly improved the manuscript. As part of the Posgrado en Ciencias BiolÓgicas of UNAM, R.O. received a PhD scholarship from CONACYT (327503). W.T. was funded by the International Climate Protection Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Publisher Copyright: © 2017 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.

PY - 2017/10

Y1 - 2017/10

N2 - Ecological restoration has become an important strategy to conserve biodiversity and ecosystems services. To restore 15% of degraded ecosystems as stipulated by the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi target 15, we developed a prioritization framework to identify potential priority sites for restoration in Mexico, a megadiverse country. We used the most current biological and environmental data on Mexico to assess areas of biological importance and restoration feasibility at national scale and engaged stakeholders and experts throughout the process. We integrated 8 criteria into 2 components (i.e., biological importance and restoration feasibility) in a spatial multicriteria analysis and generated 11 scenarios to test the effect of assigning different component weights. The priority restoration sites were distributed across all terrestrial ecosystems of Mexico; 64.1% were in degraded natural vegetation and 6% were in protected areas. Our results provide a spatial guide to where restoration could enhance the persistence of species of conservation concern and vulnerable ecosystems while maximizing the likelihood of restoration success. Such spatial prioritization is a first step in informing policy makers and restoration planners where to focus local and large-scale restoration efforts, which should additionally incorporate social and monetary cost–benefit considerations.

AB - Ecological restoration has become an important strategy to conserve biodiversity and ecosystems services. To restore 15% of degraded ecosystems as stipulated by the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi target 15, we developed a prioritization framework to identify potential priority sites for restoration in Mexico, a megadiverse country. We used the most current biological and environmental data on Mexico to assess areas of biological importance and restoration feasibility at national scale and engaged stakeholders and experts throughout the process. We integrated 8 criteria into 2 components (i.e., biological importance and restoration feasibility) in a spatial multicriteria analysis and generated 11 scenarios to test the effect of assigning different component weights. The priority restoration sites were distributed across all terrestrial ecosystems of Mexico; 64.1% were in degraded natural vegetation and 6% were in protected areas. Our results provide a spatial guide to where restoration could enhance the persistence of species of conservation concern and vulnerable ecosystems while maximizing the likelihood of restoration success. Such spatial prioritization is a first step in informing policy makers and restoration planners where to focus local and large-scale restoration efforts, which should additionally incorporate social and monetary cost–benefit considerations.

KW - análisis espacial multicriterio

KW - factibilida de restauración

KW - key biodiversity sites

KW - participatory process

KW - planificación sistemática de la conservación

KW - proceso participativo

KW - restoration feasibility

KW - sitios clave de biodiversidad

KW - spatial multicriteria analysis

KW - systematic conservation planning

KW - Ecosystems Research

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85021664420&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/cobi.12918

DO - 10.1111/cobi.12918

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 28233917

AN - SCOPUS:85021664420

VL - 31

SP - 1086

EP - 1097

JO - Conservation Biology

JF - Conservation Biology

SN - 0888-8892

IS - 5

ER -