The modern practice of protecting areas with outstanding wilderness, aesthetic and biodiversity value dates from the preservationist movements of the late 19th century, and the creation of Yellowstone National Park. For more than 100 years, governments, conservation non-governmental organizations and private citizens added new reserves to an expanding global network based on individual enthusiasm, imminent threats and opportunism. By 1980, this approach had granted protected status to more than six million km2 of the Earth's surface.
In recent decades, two factors combined to alter fundamentally the way conservation groups chose new reserves. First, protected areas were becoming the primary tool of biodiversity conservation, and the increasingly influential conservation movement began to demand large numbers of new reserves. Conservation planners suddenly found themselves able to decide proactively where these new reserves would be placed. Second, there was an increasing recognition that the ad hoc designation of protected areas in the past had resulted in a reserve system that offered too much protection to a few species and habitats (generally those that were not considered valuable for other uses), while under-protecting much threatened biodiversity. These two factors spurred the development of systematic conservation planning, a field focused on creating reserve networks that protect biodiversity comprehensively and efficiently. The quantitative techniques used to design these reserve networks are known as ‘spatial conservation prioritization’. From pencil-and-paper methods based on regional species lists, the field has rapidly evolved to incorporate high-resolution spatial data on species distributions, threatening processes, and complicating social, economic and political factors.
Although overviews of systematic conservation planning are available, this volume represents the first review of its underlying quantitative methods and approaches. The 19 chapters in this book approach this goal from two directions. The first is theoretical: to describe the concepts that underpin current spatial conservation prioritization methods and to outline potential directions that will define future research. The second purpose is practical: to offer and explain a set of commonly used methodological approaches and freely available software tools that apply these theoretical methods to real conservation prioritization problems. The book assembles an impressive group of 38 experts (primarily from academia, but also from conservation practice) to achieve this.
The topics span an ambitiously broad range of contemporary issues in spatial conservation prioritization, and in general do so very effectively. The core of the book comprises four chapters, each of which describes a software package that translates spatial prioritization theory into decision-support for conservation managers. These four conservation prioritization tools have only previously been described in disparate scientific papers and user manuals. Having general introductions, explanations and example applications of each method in the same book represents a valuable addition to the conservation literature. More importantly, prioritization is an applied discipline, and can be approached and understood through application, as well as theory. These four chapters are therefore more than just introductory guides to software, they represent an alternative pedagogical approach to spatial conservation prioritization. Unfortunately, the chapters rarely discuss the four methods comparatively, and it might therefore be difficult for practitioners to determine which method best suits their application. An independent overview of the methods, contrasting their strengths and weaknesses, seemed missing.
The remaining chapters fit into two broad groups. The first set considers different aspects of spatial conservation prioritization theory, beginning with an introduction to key concepts. Subsequent theory chapters revisit fundamental issues in more detail (such as alternative mathematical definitions, or the importance of habitat dynamics), and offer novel insights with impressive frequency. The second group of chapters concerns a suite of methods that are used to support spatial conservation prioritization, including species distribution modelling, uncertainty and process-based population models, such as metapopulation modelling and spatial population viability analysis.
The book provides an ambitious review of spatial conservation prioritization, but this diversity is also a source of weakness, as it is sometimes unclear for whom the volume is written. The core software chapters provide an overview of the tools that would be an excellent introduction for conservation practitioners or graduate students, as would some of the supporting chapters (such as chapter 18, which investigates the difficult process of implementing the output generated by spatial conservation prioritization methods). Other chapters are written by and for research academics, and these chapters address theoretical issues with a quantitative rigour that practitioners and students might find inaccessible. This catholic approach is perhaps understandable however, given that a book reviewing spatial conservation prioritization is long overdue. Spatial Conservation Prioritization assesses two decades of insights, research and application, and looks to the future directions of a field that already publishes more than 1000 peer-reviewed papers annually. It is a valuable addition to a field in great need of review.
