Strategic Planning for Species Conservation: A Handbook - IUCN

10. Integration of SCS with other conservation planning efforts
of threatened populations requires protection of the habitat in which they occur. The threat
criteria for species’ Red-Listing include “extent of occurrence” and “area of occupancy”, both
explicitly reflecting spatial requirements important for continued persistence of species
populations (IUCN 2001; IUCN 2008).
The rapidly changing demands of practical biodiversity conservation in the 21 st century
arising from global warming and other environmental change make it particularly important
to continue efforts to increase the integration of species-focused conservation strategies
with area-oriented and other conservation planning efforts. There have been recent major
shifts of conservation emphases worldwide. Species-oriented conservation has changed
from simply considering the number of species to instead recognising the wide variety of
functional roles that species play within ecosystems. This realization has evolved to
encompass the idea of ecosystem services – acknowledging the value that biodiversity
brings to humans either directly (e.g., food and fibre production) or indirectly (e.g.,
pollination and erosion control). Many of these ideas are referred to in earlier chapters of
this Handbook (e.g., see Chapter 6 on Vision and Goals).
A similar situation has arisen for conservation centred on protected areas. During the 20 th
century effort has gradually been shifting from an emphasis on designing protected areas
and identifying the species within them, to much greater emphasis on effective
management of protected areas for various purposes, including poverty reduction, and,
more generally, for the benefit of people, as evidenced by the IUCN Protected Areas
Management Categories 6 (IUCN 1994); “Parks are no longer allowed to simply “protect” but
are charged with providing ecosystem services and facilitating poverty reduction via local
development, ecotourism, and sustainable resource use” (Redford, Wilkie, and Fearn
2007). While parks’ core function remains the conservation of biodiversity, other roles may
include the maintenance of ecosystem services, links to human livelihoods through the
sustainable use of natural resources, and the preservation of cultural values. There is also
increased emphasis on involving indigenous and local communities in protected area
management, as important stakeholders in their own right (West and Brechin 1991; Stevens
1997; Posey 2000; Oviedo, Maffi, and Larsen 2000; Phillips 2002; Wilson 2003).
Moreover, it is now recognised that biodiversity “�benefits people through more than just
its contribution to material welfare and livelihoods. Biodiversity contributes to security,
resiliency, social relations, health, and freedom of choices and actions” (MA 2005). The
recent United Nations-sponsored Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005)
distinguishes four broad groups of ecosystem services: provisioning, regulating, cultural,
and supporting, with further categories and subcategories.
The results of these trends in conservation have been hotly debated; for examples, see
commentary by Haslett (2002), McCauley (2006), Armsworth et al. (2007), and Boitani et al.
(2008). Nevertheless, many conservation practitioners recognise that management of
landscapes to include the protection of ecosystem services can be a “value-added strategy”
to support and complement existing conservation efforts based on species and their
habitats, which may offer a potentially highly effective means of improving overall
conservation success, both within and outside designated protected areas (Haslett, Berry,
and Zobel 2007), and that the integration of different (but complementary) approaches can
6 There are currently six Protected Area Management Categories, ranging from strictly protected to
managed mainly for sustainable use of natural ecosystems (see http://www.unep-wcmc.org/
protected_areas/categories/index.html accessed 24 July 2008).
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