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Publication
Progressing delineations of key biodiversity areas for seabirds, and their application to management of coastal seas
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Aim: Decision-making products that support effective marine spatial planning are essential for guiding efforts that enable conservation of biodiversity facing increasing
pressures. Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are a product recently agreed upon by an international network of organizations for identifying globally important areas. Utilizing
the KBA framework, and by developing a conservative protocol to identify sites, we
identify globally importants places for breeding seabirds throughout the coastal seas
of a national territory. We inform marine spatial planning by evaluating potential activities that may impact species and how a proposed network of Marine Management
Areas (MMAs) overlap with important sites.
Location: Southwest Atlantic Ocean.
Methods: We collated a national inventory of all breeding locations for seabirds, including abundance records where available, and complementary estimates of at-sea
distribution. We delineated areas of importance in coastal seas following approaches
tailored to the ecology of species and assessed areas against global KBA criteria. To
determine opportunities for species conservation and management, we reviewed
which human activities have been documented to impact the target species globally
via IUCN Red List accounts, and also assessed the overlap of important sites with a
proposed MMA network.
Results: We identified global KBAs for nine seabird species (Anatidae, Diomedeidae,
Laridae, Procellariidae, Spheniscidae, Stercorariidae) throughout national coastal seas.
Globally important areas where multiple species overlapped were only partially accounted for in key zones of the proposed MMA network.
Main Conclusions: Development of a conservative protocol to identify marine sites
for assessment against KBA criteria, revealed opportunities for enhancing a network
of proposed Marine Management Areas in coastal seas. The framework we apply in
this study has broad relevance for other systems where the design or review of management plans for the marine environment is required.
Description
Keywords
At-sea distribution Key biodiversity areas Marine megafauna Marine spatial planning Seabirds
Citation
Handley, J. M., Harte, E., Stanworth, A., Poncet, S., Catry, P., Cleminson, S., Crofts, S., & Dias, M. (2022). Progressing delineations of key biodiversity areas for seabirds, and their application to management of coastal seas. Diversity & Distributions, 1. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.13651
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd