BIODIVERSITY

• Tahun 1994, the Biodiversity Support Program

menugaskan kelompok-kelompok peserta untuk
mengevaluasi 35 regional habitat units (RHUs) dan
memasukkannya dalam salah satu kategori sbb:
– Relatively intact (lowest threat)
– Relatively stable
– Vulnerable
– Endangered
– Critical (highest threat)
• Proses evaluasi didasarkan pada “nilai biologis” dan
“status konservasi”.
• Selanjutnya area diranking menurut prioritas konservasi.
Kategori tingkat keterancaman
Kategori

Relatively Relatively Vulnerable Endangered Critical

intact stable

Degree of threat

Ecosystem integrity
1. Species richness
2. Phyletic diversity
3. Number of endemic species
4. Beta diversity
5. Presence of rare/endangered species
1. The presence/absence of large blocks of
original habitat
2. The percent of remaining original habitat
3. The rate of conversion
4. Degree of degradation and fragmentation
5. Degree of protection
• Masing-masing kelompok memulai dengan data set
yang sama.
• Masing-masing kelompok menghasilkan prioritas
konservasi yang berbeda.
• Dapat ditebak (gambar A):
– Tiap group memberikan prioritas tertinggi pada RHU
dengan nilai biologis tertinggi, dan vice versa.
– Mayoritas memberikan prioritas tertinggi pada RHU
dengan status critical, diikuti dengan endangered, dst.
• Tetapi (gambar B):
– Salah satu group memberikan prioritas tertinggi pada
relatively stable juga critical.
• Penentuan prioritas berdasarkan dua faktor
(“values”) lebih mudah:
– Nilai biologis
• Area dengan nilai biologis tinggi mendapatkan
prioritas lebih tinggi untuk aksi konservasi.
– Tingkat keterancaman
• Area yang lebih terancam mendapatkan prioritas
yang lebih tinggi untuk aksi konservasi.
• Faktor yang ketiga menambah kompleksitas:
– Integritas
• Area yang lebih utuh (intact) prioritasnya lebih
tinggi.
• Menyelamatkan area yang intact sebelum menjadi
terdegradasi dan terfragmentasi.
• Derajat keterancaman dan integritas ekosistem
mempunyai konflik langsung.
– Derajat keterancaman mementingkan skala critical pada
status konservasi.
– Integritas menekankan pada skala relatively stable pada
status konservasi.
Determining what to protect:
The priority-setting process
• Helps set priorities and allows acting on
those priorities in an effective manner.
• Shaped by values, goals, and resources of
their users.
– E.g. if an organization values a certain aspect of
biodiversity, but does not have the resources to
protect it, its priority will change.
Consists of three steps:

1. The creation of biodiversity inventories

2. The selection of specific elements of
biodiversity to be targeted for protection
based on inventory data
3. The development of action plans for
protecting the selected elements of
biodiversity
• In the priority-setting process, aspects are
considered relative to some scale of concern
– Geographic
• Global, national, or local
• Only within a specific region
– Taxonomic
– Temporal
• Each scale has its own biases
Most priority-setting processes embody one of
four central goals:

1. Protecting all of biodiversity

2. Protecting the most biodiversity
3. Protecting the most diverse subset of
biodiversity
4. Protecting the most valuable biodiversity
• What does it mean to “protect” biodiversity?
• What is the definition of “biodiversity” that is
employed by the conservation organization in
practice?
– Different conception of what these two terms mean.
– Affects the types of inventories and action plans.
• How do we measure relative quantities of
biodiversity to distinguish the “most” biodiversity?
• A conservation organization’s concept of which
aspects of biodiversity are “valuable” and
“diverse” should be made explicit.
• Many priority-setting methods take this as their
central tenet.
• Long history in religion/morality and “heroic”
connotation, based on idea that humans must
protect all life and even the most obscure
species.
Problems:
• Emphasis on “protecting the most threatened” elements.
– Failure to protect all species if the least threatened are ignored.
– Lower flexibility.
• Conservation organizations have to decide whether to deal
with emergencies as they arise, or put some of their efforts
into preventative measures.
• Lack of sufficient conservation resources makes it
impossible to deal with all threatened species.
• Once conservation organizations recognize that they
cannot in practice “protect all” they must consider
selecting a different central goal.
• Potentially reasonable goal if conservation
organizations have little knowledge of the
particulars and context surrounding
assemblages of biodiversity.
• Proponents necessarily treat biodiversity as
measureable.
– Assume answering which assemblage contains
more biodiversity is possible.
Problems:
• Biodiversity is too complex to be
measured/expressed as a single quantitative
variable.
• Heavy reliance on species richness.
– Should be used in conjunction with other measures (e.g.
endemism, integrity, taxonomic isolation) to be useful.
• Recent development:
– Protecting sample of biodiversity representative of the
entirety of a region.
– Succeeding conservation efforts should protect
unprotected elements while ignoring already-protected
elements.
• Based on premise that biodiversity means
different and degrees of difference should be
measured instead of number of taxa.
• There are 3 methods that…
– offer potentially useful perspectives on
assessing biodiversity,
– but fall short by trying capture the single best
measure of biodiversity.
1. Differences between species in terms of their genealogical
relationships.
– Assumes differences among species are likely congruent with their
genealogy.
– Problem: species that are outstanding in one or a few characters
but have several close relatives are given low priority.
2. Differences in their characteristics and features
– Aims to protect feature-diversity.
– Problems: other levels of biodiversity are not incorporated.
– Assumes all features of a species have equal worth.
3. Determining which members of a clade add the most
diversity to it.
• Motivated by two facts:
– Humans have insufficient resources to protect all of
biodiversity.
– Humans have accumulated a lot of knowledge about
different elements of biodiversity.
• Depends on finding what humans value in
biodiversity.
• As wide a range of human voices as possible must
contribute to get a full range of perspectives.
• may lead to wildly differing proposals for
action;
• shapes the conservation organization’s
practical definition of biodiversity;
• and affects the choice of what elements of
biodiversity on which to focus.