Habitat vulnerability in conservation planning — when it matters and how much

Abstract

Addressing the vulnerability of areas to habitat loss remains a challenge for conservation planners. Different areas are often assumed equally vulnerable to habitat loss or, worse, conservation attention focuses on remote, unproductive areas contributing little to minimizing biodiversity loss. Understanding vulnerability is crucial to planning but gathering the required information can be time consuming and expensive; and any data on vulnerability will be uncertain. We investigated the circumstances in which including vulnerability data produces better conservation decisions. We found that it is best to use existing information on vulnerability only when uncertainty is less than 20%–30%. With higher uncertainty and large spatial variance in vulnerability, it is best to improve vulnerability data before making conservation decisions. Otherwise, it is best to ignore vulnerability and consider only biodiversity value. Other important factors are whether reservation displaces or inhibits habitat loss and the correlation between biodiversity value and vulnerability.