Enhancing biodiversity conservation in existing land-use plans with widely available datasets and spatial analysis techniques

In many developing countries, high rates of deforestation and biodiversity loss make conservation efforts urgent. Improving existing land-use plans can be an option for enhancing biodiversity conservation. We showcase an approach to enhancing an existing forest land-use plan using widely available data and spatial tools, focusing on Argentina's Southern Yungas ecoregion. We mapped the distribution of wilderness areas and species and habitats of conservation concern, assessed their representation in the land-use plan and quantified potential changes in habitat availability and forest connectivity. Wilderness comprised 48% of the study area, and the highest concentrations of elements of conservation concern were in the north. In the current land-use plan, wilderness areas often occur in regions where logging and grazing are allowed, and a large proportion of the forest with the highest conservation value (43%) is under some level of human influence. Furthermore, we found that deforestation being legally allowed in the land-use plan could reduce forest connectivity and habitat availability substantially. We recommend updating the current land-use plan by considering human influence and elements of conservation concern. More broadly, we demonstrate that widely available spatial datasets and straightforward approaches can improve the usefulness of existing land-use plans so that they more fully incorporate conservation goals.