Conservation Targets

Protected areas are the cornerstones of biodiversity conservation and have never been more relevant than at the present time when the world is facing both a biodiversity and a climate change crisis. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) has been helping to set global standards and best practice guidelines in protected area planning and management for 60 years. Following this guidance, many countries have made significant progress toward their Aichi Target 11 commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The global community will be coming together at the 15th Conference of the Parties of the CBD to set new biodiversity conservation targets for the next decade, as milestones to 2050 and a vision of "a world living in harmony with nature." This paper lays out the WCPA perspective on priorities for supporting effective protected and conserved areas for the post2020 era.

Marine protected areas are a primary strategy for the conservation of marine habitats and species across the globe. In small island developing states, they often exceed their terrestrial counterparts in both number and area. To assess their effectiveness as a conservation measure over time, the accurate and upto-date representation of marine protected areas through spatial and tabular data is imperative in order to establish baselines. Various regional and global agreements have set specific protection targets and these require spatial reporting on protected areas as an indicator of progress. For the insular Caribbean region, this study considers progress towards global Aichi Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity which is to conserve at least 10% of coastal and marine areas, and progress towards the regional target of the Caribbean Challenge Initiative (CCI) to protect "at least 20% of nearshore marine and coastal habitats", both aiming for a 2020 deadline. Progress towards these targets differs widely depending on the accuracy of the datasets and the methods used. In an effort to update the current baseline of protection within the insular Caribbean, multiple governments, the Nature Conservancy and the Caribbean Marine Protected Area Management Network and Forum collaborated to develop a single insular Caribbean protected area dataset with accurate boundary information and the best available ecoregional and political boundaries. This study represents the most in-depth and spatially accurate effort to date to determine marine protected area coverage in the insular Caribbean. It is found that some form of marine management has been designated for around 7.1% of our study area in the insular Caribbean; progress towards Aichi Target 11 averaged among sovereign states within the insular Caribbean stands at approximately 3.25% and only three of the 10 participating governments in the CCI have reached their 20% target. Ocean protection was further assessed across the 25 governments and the three marine ecoregions by four different marine zones. Recommendations are made on regional to global cooperation for data sharing and reporting on indicators, highlighting possible directions to fill marine conservation gaps in the insular Caribbean.

SUMMARYProtected areas (PAs) have been selected using either subjective or objective criteria applied to an extremely limited subset of biodiversity. Improved availability of species distribution data, better statistical tools to predict species distributions and algorithms to optimize spatial conservation planning allow many impediments to be overcome, particularly on small islands. This study analyses whether 219 species are adequately protected by PAs on Pico Island (the Azores, Portugal), and if they are as efficient as possible, maximizing species protection while minimizing costs. We performed distribution modelling of species’ potential distributions, proposed individual conservation targets (considering the context of each species in the archipelago and their current conservation status) to determine the efficiency of current PAs in meeting such targets and identify alternative or complementary areas relevant for conservation. Results showed that current PAs do not cover all...

Leading up to the Convention on Biological Diversity Conference of the Parties 15, there is momentum around setting bold conservation targets. Yet, it remains unclear how much of Earth's land area remains without significant human influence and where this land is located. We compare four recent global maps of human influences across Earth's land, Anthromes, Global Human Modification, Human Footprint and Low Impact Areas, to answer these questions. Despite using various methodologies and data, these different spatial assessments independently estimate similar percentages of the Earth's terrestrial surface as having very low (20%–34%) and low (48%–56%) human influence. Three out of four spatial assessments agree on 46% of the non‐permanent ice‐ or snow‐covered land as having low human influence. However, much of the very low and low influence portions of the planet are comprised of cold (e.g., boreal forests, montane grasslands and tundra) or arid (e.g., deserts) landscape...

Scilla anthericoides is a neglected name traditionally considered as Urginea maritima var. anthericoides. Based on recent field observations of living plants completed by karyological analyses, we promote again this taxon at species rank, under the genus Charybdis. It differs from other species of Charybdis maritima aggregate by many characters of flowers, fruits, bulbs, leaves and by ploidy level. It is endemic to the regional hotspot Kabylias-Numidia-Kroumiria in north-eastern Algeria. It is a threatened species that has been assessed as vulnerable.

The disjunct distribution of Lepanthes thoerleae led to its being described as a new species by Luer in 1997. The material in the protologue for Ames's L. yunckeri, described in 1938, leaves no doubt that L. thoerleae is a collection of L. yunckeri from Suriname. Formerly, L. yunckeri was known only from Central America.

1. A novel protocol was developed for ecological prioritization of coral reefs for inclusion in a marine reserve network. Standard benthic survey data were normalized and combined in a conservation priority index (CPI) which rates individual candidate sites according to their ecological values and their potential contributions to an effective network. 2. The CPI differentiates between sites on the basis of strength or weakness of surrogates for desirable attributes such as benthic biodiversity, reef-building capacity and hard-coral resilience. 3. Biodiversity and reef-building attributes (more is better) were assigned progressive weightings (high abundance, high score), whereas neutral or detrimental attributes (less is better) were assigned regressive weightings (high abundance, low score). 4. Abundance of small corals (new recruits and remnants) was included as an indicator of a site's potential for recovery following disturbance. 5. The CPI rankings were used in conjunction with multidimensional scaling to prioritize candidate sites for a proposed reserve network near Salvador, Brazil. The information is complementary to considerations of existing uses and socioeconomic considerations, in the prioritization of reefs for protection. 6. The approach ensured that ecological inputs to the broader marine spatial planning process embraced both representativeness of biodiversity per se and the investigator's evaluation of key qualitative site attributes (amount, size, and resilience indicators for the critical architectural components hard coral and encrusting coralline algae).

Coral reef integrity is currently threatened by natural and human activity. The reefs of the eastern Brazilian coast, which stand out as the largest and richest of the South Atlantic Ocean, are not an exception. Tourism exploitation, destructive fishing practices, increased pollution and uncontrolled coastal development are the major human impacts on reefs. The creation of new no-taken zones (NTZs) has thus become an urgent issue because NTZs represent the best measure to guarantee the conservation of reef ecosystems, which are considered biodiversity hotspots. The objective of this work was to define priority areas for implementing NTZs in a coastal reef complex located on the eastern Brazilian coast (southern coast of Bahia State, in the Tinharé Archipelago), which is within an environmental protection area (Tinharé and Boipeba Islands State Environmental Protection Area ['Área de Proteção Ambiental Estadual das Ilhas de Tinharé e Boipeba']). Here we performed a detailed ecological survey of the benthic community in a set of coastal reefs and calculated quantitative conservation priority indices (CPIs) based on ecological attributes associated with the cover of key benthic organisms (corals, macroalgae, filamentous algae, branching and encrusting calcareous algae, sponges and zoanthids) and quantitative indices related to coral species richness and the mean age of the reefs in question. Five coral reefs were classified as high priority for conservation. The large spatial extent of the adjacent fringing reefs of the islands of Tinharé and Boipeba justifies the creation of two rectangular NTZs. We recommend therefore the implementation of two 12 km 2 areas spanning two reefs considered of high conservation priority located on the island of Tinharé ("Boca da Barra Norte and Sul") and one reef located on the island of Boipeba ("Ponta dos Castelhanos"). With this design, two of the reefs that were classified as high priority for conservation, "Piscinas de Moreré" and "Tassimirim" (Boipeba), which are extensively used by local populations (for fishing and tourism), would not be covered by the NTZs. The effectiveness of the conservation of these ecosystems also depends on popular acceptance and participation and on combating destructive anthropogenic activities in the region, which include destructive fishing practices and exploratory tourism.

t may seem somehow out of line to present a new system of botanical databases in the context of a meeting on orchid conservation, for two main rea- sons. Even though botanists have been rather slow in upgrading to the use of electronic databases (with some early controversy regarding the desirability of the application of electronic data processing methods to taxonomic problems as a whole, see i.e. Shetler 1974), the dissemination of plant information via the web has grown steadily in recent years.

The present study deals with the development of systematic conservation planning as management instrument in small oceanic islands, ensuring open systems of governance, and able to integrate an informed and involved participation of the stakeholders. Marxan software was used to define management areas according a set of alternative land use scenarios considering different conservation and management paradigms. Modeled conservation zones were interpreted and compared with the existing protected areas allowing more fused information for future trade-outs and stakeholder's involvement. The results, allowing the identification of Target Management Units (TMU) based on the consideration of different development scenarios proved to be consistent with a feasible development of evaluation approaches able to support sound governance systems. Moreover, the detailed geographic identification of TMU seems to be able to support participated policies towards a more sustainable management of the entire island.

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Scilla anthericoides is a neglected name traditionally considered as Urginea maritima var. anthericoides. Based on recent field observations of living plants completed by karyological analyses, we promote again this taxon at species rank, under the genus Charybdis. It differs from other species of Charybdis maritima aggregate by many characters of flowers, fruits, bulbs, leaves and by ploidy level. It is endemic to the regional hotspot Kabylias-Numidia-Kroumiria in northeastern Algeria. It is a threatened species that has been assessed as vulnerable.

Effective conservation of rare plant species requires a detailed understanding of their unique distributions and habitat requirements to identify conservation targets. Research suggests that local conservation efforts may be one of the best means for accomplishing this task. We conducted a geographical analysis of the local distributions of rare plants in Napa County, California, to identify spatial relationships with individual habitat types. We measured the potential contribution of individual habitats to rare plant conservation by integrating analyses on overall diversity, species per area, specificity-weighted richness, presence of hotspots, and the composition of the rare plant community in each habitat type. This combination of analyses allowed us to determine which habitats are most significant for rare plant conservation at a local scale. Our analyses indicated that several habitat types were consistently associated with rare plant species. In broad terms, grasslands, oak fo...

The emerging interest in the biological and conservation significance of locally rare species prompts a number of questions about their correspondence with other categories of biodiversity, especially global rarity. Here we present an analysis of the correspondence between the distributions of globally and locally rare plants. Using biological hotspots of rarity as our framework, we evaluate the extent to which conservation of globally rare plants will act as a surrogate for conservation of locally rare taxa. Subsequently, we aim to identify gaps between rarity hotspots and protected land to guide conservation planning. We compiled distribution data for globally and locally rare plants from botanically diverse Napa County, California into a geographic information system. We then generated richness maps highlighting hotspots of global and local rarity. Following this, we overlaid the distribution of these hotspots with the distribution of protected lands to identify conservation gaps. Based on occupancy of 1 km 2 grid cells, we found that over half of Napa County is occupied by at least one globally or locally rare plant. Hotspots of global and local rarity occurred in a substantially smaller portion of the county. Of these hotspots, less than 5% were classified as multi-scale hotspots, i.e. they were hotspots of global and local rarity. Although, several hotspots corresponded with the 483 km 2 of protected lands in Napa County, some of the richest areas did not. Thus, our results show

Protected areas are the cornerstones of biodiversity conservation and have never been more relevant than at the present time when the world is facing both a biodiversity and a climate change crisis. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) has been helping to set global standards and best practice guidelines in protected area planning and management for 60 years. Following this guidance, many countries have made significant progress toward their Aichi Target 11 commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The global community will be coming together at the 15th Conference of the Parties of the CBD to set new biodiversity conservation targets for the next decade, as milestones to 2050 and a vision of "a world living in harmony with nature." This paper lays out the WCPA perspective on priorities for supporting effective protected and conserved areas for the post2020 era.

Protected areas are the cornerstones of biodiversity conservation and have never been more relevant than at the present time when the world is facing both a biodiversity and a climate change crisis. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) has been helping to set global standards and best practice guidelines in protected area planning and management for 60 years. Following this guidance, many countries have made significant progress toward their Aichi Target 11 commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The global community will be coming together at the 15th Conference of the Parties of the CBD to set new biodiversity conservation targets for the next decade, as milestones to 2050 and a vision of "a world living in harmony with nature." This paper lays out the WCPA perspective on priorities for supporting effective protected and conserved areas for the post2020 era.

Marine protected areas are a primary strategy for the conservation of marine habitats and species across the globe. In small island developing states, they often exceed their terrestrial counterparts in both number and area. To assess their effectiveness as a conservation measure over time, the accurate and upto-date representation of marine protected areas through spatial and tabular data is imperative in order to establish baselines. Various regional and global agreements have set specific protection targets and these require spatial reporting on protected areas as an indicator of progress. For the insular Caribbean region, this study considers progress towards global Aichi Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity which is to conserve at least 10% of coastal and marine areas, and progress towards the regional target of the Caribbean Challenge Initiative (CCI) to protect "at least 20% of nearshore marine and coastal habitats", both aiming for a 2020 deadline. Progress towards these targets differs widely depending on the accuracy of the datasets and the methods used. In an effort to update the current baseline of protection within the insular Caribbean, multiple governments, the Nature Conservancy and the Caribbean Marine Protected Area Management Network and Forum collaborated to develop a single insular Caribbean protected area dataset with accurate boundary information and the best available ecoregional and political boundaries. This study represents the most in-depth and spatially accurate effort to date to determine marine protected area coverage in the insular Caribbean. It is found that some form of marine management has been designated for around 7.1% of our study area in the insular Caribbean; progress towards Aichi Target 11 averaged among sovereign states within the insular Caribbean stands at approximately 3.25% and only three of the 10 participating governments in the CCI have reached their 20% target. Ocean protection was further assessed across the 25 governments and the three marine ecoregions by four different marine zones. Recommendations are made on regional to global cooperation for data sharing and reporting on indicators, highlighting possible directions to fill marine conservation gaps in the insular Caribbean.

Global biodiversity targets have far-reaching implications for nature conservation worldwide. Scenarios and models hold unfulfilled promise for ensuring such targets are well founded and implemented; here, we review how they can and should inform the Aichi Targets of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and their reformulation. They offer two clear benefits: providing a scientific basis for the wording and quantitative elements of targets; and identifying synergies and trade-offs by accounting for interactions between targets and the actions needed to achieve them. The capacity of scenarios and models to address complexity makes them invaluable for developing meaningful targets and policy, and improving conservation outcomes. The Potential of Scenarios and Models to Inform Conservation Targets The Aichi Targets of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 i provide an agreed set of conservation aspirations for the international community, as well as explicit targets that countries have committed to achieve [1]. Justified and compelling targets have the power to shape policy and activity within and beyond the environment sector [2]. Knock-on effects of environmental targets, such as the 2015 global target of less than 2 C warming [3], can be profound, but the ways in which they are realised are complex. Feedbacks and trade-offs between sectors and policies, in particular, are challenging to characterise, understand, and navigate [4,5]. A poor understanding of the potential consequences of conservation targets, the interactions between targets, and the actions needed to achieve them, can lead to unexpectedly poor conservation outcomes, inefficient actions, and lost opportunities for meeting commitments. For example, some of the easiest pathways towards achieving the global target to protect 17% of the terrestrial ecosystems on Earth would not adequately safeguard the biodiversity (see Glossary) this target is intended to conserve [6-9]. Scenarios depict plausible futures and alternative policies and management strategies that may affect the achievement of conservation goals [10,11]. Models represent simplified and idealised understandings of a system, and can describe or predict (or forecast) conservation outcomes under a range of alternative scenarios. They range from qualitative conceptual models describing relationships between elements of a system, to quantitative models, built from either a principled understanding of the mechanics of a system, or through analysis of the emergent patterns observed in data [11,12]. Here, we focus primarily on quantitative correlative and process-based models dealing with biodiversity and ecosystem services, such as biophysical, ecological, and socio-ecological models. Together, scenarios and models provide a powerful means of characterising, understanding, and projecting the conservation implications of targets, and the positive and negative consequences of actions aimed at achieving them [11,13]; for example, scenarios and models have underpinned climate change targets and the actions needed to meet them [3,14]. Scenarios and models can capture complex Highlights The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 commits countries to achieve specific conservation targets (the Aichi Targets). How such targets are designed and implemented has far-reaching implications for biodiversity worldwide.

Vascular plants new or rare for Tunisia occurring on the islands (Galite, Zembra, Kuriat, Monastir, Kerkennah, Kneiss, Djerba).-This study concerns the indigenous vascular plants newly reported for Tunisia and discovered on the islands during some field trips performed since 2014. Five native taxa are new to Tunisia: Bellis perennis, Carthamus creticus, Moraea mediterranea, Asplenium balearicum and Galium minutulum, the latter two also being new to North Africa. Information on 24 rare or poorly known taxa, most often of great biogeographical interest, is given, too. Most of these were discovered on the islands of the eastern coast (Kuriat, Monastir, Kerkennah, Kneiss, Djerba), but also on the northern islands of Zembra and La Galite. The new chorological data underline the first-rate conservation importance of these islands and islets for the preservation of the overall coastal biodiversity of Tunisia.

The present study deals with the development of systematic conservation planning as management instrument in small oceanic islands, ensuring open systems of governance, and able to integrate an informed and involved participation of the stakeholders. Marxan software was used to define management areas according a set of alternative land use scenarios considering different conservation and management paradigms. Modeled conservation zones were interpreted and compared with the existing protected areas allowing more fused information for future trade-outs and stakeholder's involvement. The results, allowing the identification of Target Management Units (TMU) based on the consideration of different development scenarios proved to be consistent with a feasible development of evaluation approaches able to support sound governance systems. Moreover, the detailed geographic identification of TMU seems to be able to support participated policies towards a more sustainable management of the entire island.

Lepanthes yunckeri Ames, Publ. Field Mus. Nat. Hist., Bot. Ser. 17: 327. 1938. Type: Honduras: Comayagua: above Siguatepeque, on tree trunk in forest near the summit of the range above El Achote, in cloud zone, 1800 m alt., 28 Jul 1936, T.G. Yuncker, R.F. Dawson & H.R. Youse 6152 (holotype: AMES) = Lepanthes thoerleae Luer, Lindleyana 12(1): 39. 1997. Type: Suriname: near Paramaribo, flowered in cultivation, 1992, OIC-10629, C. Luer 16312 (holotype: SEL!) syn. nov.

What does the future hold for the Orchidaceae? Historically the family has been quite plastic and responsive to large-scale habitat transformations, perhaps none so dramatic as the changes experienced during the formation of the cordilleras of the Northern Andes and lower Central America. Coupled with the backdrop of global fluctuations in climate, the rapid rise of these mountains over the last 0.5-2 M years have fragmented habitats and changed climate locally. These mountains are one of the most biologically diverse regions of the planet and may have served as a species pump for the Caribbean and other regions of Central and South America. The development of such diversity occurred over a scale of tens of millions of years to perhaps just a few thousand. While the same processes of the past are likely operational now, the current rate of habitat change may be unprecedented outside asteroid or major meteor impacts as global climate change accelerates, human- altered landscapes spre...

1. A novel protocol was developed for ecological prioritization of coral reefs for inclusion in a marine reserve network. Standard benthic survey data were normalized and combined in a conservation priority index (CPI) which rates individual candidate sites according to their ecological values and their potential contributions to an effective network. 2. The CPI differentiates between sites on the basis of strength or weakness of surrogates for desirable attributes such as benthic biodiversity, reef-building capacity and hard-coral resilience. 3. Biodiversity and reef-building attributes (more is better) were assigned progressive weightings (high abundance, high score), whereas neutral or detrimental attributes (less is better) were assigned regressive weightings (high abundance, low score). 4. Abundance of small corals (new recruits and remnants) was included as an indicator of a site's potential for recovery following disturbance. 5. The CPI rankings were used in conjunction with multidimensional scaling to prioritize candidate sites for a proposed reserve network near Salvador, Brazil. The information is complementary to considerations of existing uses and socioeconomic considerations, in the prioritization of reefs for protection. 6. The approach ensured that ecological inputs to the broader marine spatial planning process embraced both representativeness of biodiversity per se and the investigator's evaluation of key qualitative site attributes (amount, size, and resilience indicators for the critical architectural components hard coral and encrusting coralline algae).

Charybdis glaucophylla (Asparagaceae), a new species from Sardinia, is described and illustrated. It is a diploid species with 2n = 20 chromosomes growing along the rocky coast, sandy dunes and mountain top in the southwestern part of the island. Within the genus, this species results taxonomically well isolated and differentiated due to relevant morphological and phenological features, such as the leaves wide and short, very rigid and glaucous-pruinose, as well as the very late foliation (winter). It shows only some relationships with C. pancration for the whitish bulb tunics and the diploid chromosome complement, and with C. maura and C. aphylla due to the glaucous leaves.

The video-transect method consists of a field survey performed with a video-camera along a line of fixed length, with the registered images further analyzed using a computer. This method was successfully applied in Brazil for the first time in the coral reefs of Todos os Santos Bay. The main goal of this work was to define the minimum sampling effort needed to describe the coral community when the video-transect method was applied to a selected reef site, namely the Pedra do Silva Reef in the Itacolomis reef complex, inside the Corumbau Marine Extractive Reserve, in Southern Bahia. Each transect was analyzed throughout its length, in successive captured video frames. The findings revealed that six 20 m long transects with an analysis of twenty points per image (frame) was sufficient for sampling the broad taxonomic categories of hard corals and major reef benthos, and that the whole field operation could be performed during one dive per station.

Vascular plants new or rare for Tunisia occurring on the islands (Galite, Zembra, Kuriat, Monastir, Kerkennah, Kneiss, Djerba).-This study concerns the indigenous vascular plants newly reported for Tunisia and discovered on the islands during some field trips performed since 2014. Five native taxa are new to Tunisia: Bellis perennis, Carthamus creticus, Moraea mediterranea, Asplenium balearicum and Galium minutulum, the latter two also being new to North Africa. Information on 24 rare or poorly known taxa, most often of great biogeographical interest, is given, too. Most of these were discovered on the islands of the eastern coast (Kuriat, Monastir, Kerkennah, Kneiss, Djerba), but also on the northern islands of Zembra and La Galite. The new chorological data underline the first-rate conservation importance of these islands and islets for the preservation of the overall coastal biodiversity of Tunisia.

Vascular plants new or rare for Tunisia occurring on the islands (Galite, Zembra, Kuriat, Monastir, Kerkennah, Kneiss, Djerba).-This study concerns the indigenous vascular plants newly reported for Tunisia and discovered on the islands during some field trips performed since 2014. Five native taxa are new to Tunisia: Bellis perennis, Carthamus creticus, Moraea mediterranea, Asplenium balearicum and Galium minutulum, the latter two also being new to North Africa. Information on 24 rare or poorly known taxa, most often of great biogeographical interest, is given, too. Most of these were discovered on the islands of the eastern coast (Kuriat, Monastir, Kerkennah, Kneiss, Djerba), but also on the northern islands of Zembra and La Galite. The new chorological data underline the first-rate conservation importance of these islands and islets for the preservation of the overall coastal biodiversity of Tunisia.