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| A database documenting the distribution of birds, mammals, amphibians and snakes across 1degrees latitude and longitude squares of mainland sub-Saharan Africa provides an opportunity to quantify how many of these vertebrates are potentially catered for by recent large-scale conservation proposals. Sets of priority areas proposed by BirdLife
International, the World Wildlife Fund (USA), the World Conservation Union and the World Wide Fund for Nature, Conservation International,
and the World Resources Institute contain between 45 and 93% of 3752
species of birds, mammals, snakes and amphibians breeding in this area.
Gaps in the coverage of vertebrates were found in all large-scale
proposals, and these are mapped. Most of the conservation proposals
perform better than random selection of similar sized areas of Africa,
with the proposals focused on species performing more efficiently than
schemes based on large areas of intact habitat or process-related
criteria. Four of the schemes approach the performance of a
complementarity-based algorithm that aims to maximise the number of
species captured within a given area of land, and which has been widely
advocated as a tool for conservation planning. The reasons for this are
discussed and the relevance of the results for conservation planning at
coarse and fine scales are explained. | |
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