Biodiversity Conservation in an Urbanized Insular Landscape: Identifying Priority Areas for Bird Species in Taiwan

Abstract

The performance of Taiwan?s national park system in representing populations of native land-breeding birds was assessed and new priority areas for bird conservation were identified. Ecological niche models based on a maximum entropy algorithm were used to predict species? distributions. Areas were prioritized using a rarity?complementarity based algorithm that required satisfaction of explicit representation targets. The impracticability of selecting urbanized areas was incorporated by masking from selection those areas that contained more than a specified (threshold) percentage of modified land cover. Four modelling parameter sets differentiated by land-use land-cover (LULC) measures were used to model species? distributions. The areas selected using the different modeling parameter sets, varying representation targets for bird species presence, and different modified land cover percentage thresholds were compared to the existing national park system of Taiwan. Standard techniques of systematic conservation planning were adapted for a situation in which biodiversity conservation must take place in an insular, highly urbanized landscape. There were two surprising conclusions: (i) even though urbanization leads to declines in species? ranges, including urbanized areas leads to as spatially economical a representation of species in conservation area networks as not including them; and (ii) using a large array of LULC parameters to model species? distributions also leads to more economical solutions.