by University of Helsinki
Successful conservation relies on choosing the right tools for each goal and context. As the world aims to protect 30% of Earth's land and seas under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, conservation planners face the challenge of selecting areas that deliver the highest benefit for biodiversity while minimizing costs and meeting other competing land use needs.
A new study, led by researchers at the University of Helsinki reveals that the way we select areas for protection, using either strict targets or more flexible rankings, can result in very different levels of protection for species. The research is published in the journal Biological Conservation.
Finding areas that effectively protect biodiversity while also considering other goals, such as minimizing costs and supporting sustainable food production, is a complex task. To help with this, conservation planners rely on systematic conservation planning tools—methods designed to identify the most important areas for conservation. However, different tools can produce markedly different results, even when using the same data and the same amount of area for protection.
