Title
Landscape species approach for biodiversity conservation: a quantitative assessment of effectiveness/Las especies paisajes como estrategia de conservación de biodiversidad: evaluación cuantitativa de su efectividad
Author(s)
Germán Forero-Medina; Leonor Valenzuela; Carlos A. Saavedra-Rodríguez
Published
2021
Publisher
Revista de la Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales
Abstract
Species-oriented conservation programs are a common strategy to halt biodiversity loss. The landscape
species concept is based on the selection of a group of species with certain characteristics allowing to
identify and address the threats to biodiversity present in a particular area. It has two main assumptions:
1) that conservation of landscape species will result in the conservation of other species in the ecosystem,
and 2) that it will also maintain the ecosystem structure and its corresponding functions. To assess these
hypotheses, we rely on data from the Wildlife Project, a conservation initiative developed with this
approach in two areas of Colombia. We evaluated in a quantitative fashion the first hypothesis through
multi-season occupancy models using data from camera traps (2015 to 2017). We then estimated the
effect of conservation actions in reducing forest loss at the scale of individual land properties and at the
landscape scale by comparing deforestation rates in similar areas but in the absence of conservation
actions (counterfactual). The strategies, specifically conservation agreements, increased colonization
rates and reduced extinction rates for some landscape species and other vertebrates. Other species
were not affected by this specific strategy. Deforestation was lower in the landscape than in adjacent
areas, although there was no significant effect. At the individual property scale, in 2017 conservation
agreements reduced deforestation rates. The methods presented here allow assessing causality and
testing clear hypotheses to measure the effect of specific actions in conservation programs.
Keywords
Conservation; Program evaluation; Monitoring; Biodiversity; Tropics; Colombia
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