Case studies of conservation plans that incorporate geodiversity

Geodiversity has been used as a surrogate for biodiversity when species locations are unknown, and this utility can be extended to situations where species locations are in flux. Recently, scientists have designed conservation networks that aim to explicitly represent the range of geophysical environments, identifying a network of physical stages that could sustain biodiversity while allowing for change in species composition in response to climate change. Because there is no standard approach to designing such networks, we compiled 8 case studies illustrating a variety of ways scientists have approached the challenge. These studies show how geodiversity has been partitioned and used to develop site portfolios and connectivity designs; how geodiversity‐based portfolios compare with those derived from species and communities; and how the selection and combination of variables influences the results. Collectively, they suggest 4 key steps when using geodiversity to augment traditional biodiversity‐based conservation planning: create land units from species‐relevant variables combined in an ecologically meaningful way; represent land units in a logical spatial configuration and integrate with species locations when possible; apply selection criteria to individual sites to ensure they are appropriate for conservation; and develop connectivity among sites to maintain movements and processes. With these considerations, conservationists can design more effective site portfolios to ensure the lasting conservation of biodiversity under a changing climate.     

A Critical Assessment of the Use of Surrogate Species in Conservation Planning in the Sacramento‐San Joaquin Delta,California (U.S.A.)

Abstract: Conservation biology has provided wildlife managers with a wealth of concepts and tools for use in conservation planning; among them is the surrogate species concept. Over the past 20 years, a growing body of empirical literature has demonstrated the limited effectiveness of surrogates as management tools, unless it is first established that the target species and surrogate will respond similarly to a given set of environmental conditions. Wildlife managers and policy makers have adopted the surrogate species concept, reflecting the limited information available on most species at risk of extirpation or extinction and constraints on resources available to support conservation efforts. We examined the use of surrogate species, in the form of cross‐taxon response‐indicator species (that is, one species from which data are used to guide management planning for another, distinct species) in the Sacramento‐San Joaquin Delta, California (U.S.A.). In that system there has been increasing reliance on surrogates in conservation planning for species listed under federal or state endangered species acts, although the agencies applying the surrogate species concept did not first validate that the surrogate and target species respond similarly to relevant environmental conditions. During the same period, conservation biologists demonstrated that the surrogate concept is generally unsupported by ecological theory and empirical evidence. Recently developed validation procedures may allow for the productive use of surrogates in conservation planning, but, used without validation, the surrogate species concept is not a reliable planning tool.     

Response Variables for Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Conservation Corridors

Many studies have evaluated effectiveness of corridors by measuring species presence in and movement through small structural corridors. However, few studies have assessed whether these response variables are adequate for assessing whether the conservation goals of the corridors have been achieved or considered the costs or lag times involved in measuring the response variables. We examined 4 response variables—presence of the focal species in the corridor, interpatch movement via the corridor, gene flow, and patch occupancy—with respect to 3 criteria—relevance to conservation goals, lag time (fewest generations at which a positive response to the corridor might be evident with a particular variable), and the cost of a study when applying a particular variable. The presence variable had the least relevance to conservation goals, no lag time advantage compared with interpatch movement, and only a moderate cost advantage over interpatch movement or gene flow. Movement of individual animals between patches was the most appropriate response variable for a corridor intended to provide seasonal migration, but it was not an appropriate response variable for corridor dwellers, and for passage species it was only moderately relevant to the goals of gene flow, demographic rescue, and recolonization. Response variables related to gene flow provided a good trade‐off among cost, relevance to conservation goals, and lag time. Nonetheless, the lag time of 10–20 generations means that evaluation of conservation corridors cannot occur until a few decades after a corridor has been established. Response variables related to occupancy were most relevant to conservation goals, but the lag time and costs to detect corridor effects on occupancy were much greater than the lag time and costs to detect corridor effects on gene flow. Variables de Respuesta para la Evaluación de la Efectividad de los Corredores de Conservación     

Using abiotic variables to predict importance of sites for species representation

In systematic conservation planning, species distribution data for all sites in a planning area are used to prioritize each site in terms of the site's importance toward meeting the goal of species representation. But comprehensive species data are not available in most planning areas and would be expensive to acquire. As a shortcut, ecologists use surrogates, such as occurrences of birds or another well‐surveyed taxon, or land types defined from remotely sensed data, in the hope that sites that represent the surrogates also represent biodiversity. Unfortunately, surrogates have not performed reliably. We propose a new type of surrogate, predicted importance, that can be developed from species data for a q% subset of sites. With species data from this subset of sites, importance can be modeled as a function of abiotic variables available at no charge for all terrestrial areas on Earth. Predicted importance can then be used as a surrogate to prioritize all sites. We tested this surrogate with 8 sets of species data. For each data set, we used a q% subset of sites to model importance as a function of abiotic variables, used the resulting function to predict importance for all sites, and evaluated the number of species in the sites with highest predicted importance. Sites with the highest predicted importance represented species efficiently for all data sets when q = 25% and for 7 of 8 data sets when q = 20%. Predicted importance requires less survey effort than direct selection for species representation and meets representation goals well compared with other surrogates currently in use. This less expensive surrogate may be useful in those areas of the world that need it most, namely tropical regions with the highest biodiversity, greatest biodiversity loss, most severe lack of inventory data, and poorly developed protected area networks.     

Land trust evaluation of progress toward conservation goals

In the United States local land trusts preserve and conserve land to protect water quality and supply, farmlands, habitat for native plants and animals, areas of cultural or historical significance, and scenic views. We surveyed the 24 active, local land trusts in North Carolina (U.S.A.) to determine how they report progress toward attaining such conservation goals. Twenty-two land trusts responded to our survey. Of these, eight reported developing specific conservation goals for all of the properties they protect, five identified conservation targets on all properties, and two reported monitoring biological indicators on all of their protected properties. On the basis of these results, we believe most of the land trusts surveyed could not determine whether they were meeting conservation goals because most did not identify explicit, measurable goals and monitor progress toward them. Instead they reported success in terms of the amount of land protected and money raised. We think this is a lost opportunity for land trusts to build sound approaches to environmental management, engage the public, entice new donors, and attain funding for additional conservation activities. We propose conservation professionals help local land trusts adopt the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation, a framework developed by a consortium of international conservation organizations, to develop conservation goals and measure whether the goals are achieved.     

Ten ways remote sensing can contribute to conservation

In an effort to increase conservation effectiveness through the use of Earth observation technologies, a group of remote sensing scientists affiliated with government and academic institutions and conservation organizations identified 10 questions in conservation for which the potential to be answered would be greatly increased by use of remotely sensed data and analyses of those data. Our goals were to increase conservation practitioners’ use of remote sensing to support their work, increase collaboration between the conservation science and remote sensing communities, identify and develop new and innovative uses of remote sensing for advancing conservation science, provide guidance to space agencies on how future satellite missions can support conservation science, and generate support from the public and private sector in the use of remote sensing data to address the 10 conservation questions. We identified a broad initial list of questions on the basis of an email chain‐referral survey. We then used a workshop‐based iterative and collaborative approach to whittle the list down to these final questions (which represent 10 major themes in conservation): How can global Earth observation data be used to model species distributions and abundances? How can remote sensing improve the understanding of animal movements? How can remotely sensed ecosystem variables be used to understand, monitor, and predict ecosystem response and resilience to multiple stressors? How can remote sensing be used to monitor the effects of climate on ecosystems? How can near real‐time ecosystem monitoring catalyze threat reduction, governance and regulation compliance, and resource management decisions? How can remote sensing inform configuration of protected area networks at spatial extents relevant to populations of target species and ecosystem services? How can remote sensing‐derived products be used to value and monitor changes in ecosystem services? How can remote sensing be used to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of conservation efforts? How does the expansion and intensification of agriculture and aquaculture alter ecosystems and the services they provide? How can remote sensing be used to determine the degree to which ecosystems are being disturbed or degraded and the effects of these changes on species and ecosystem functions?     

Achieving conservation impact by shifting focus from human attitudes to behaviors

Attitudes have been a commonly used psychological measure of program effectiveness in conservation social science research. The major limitation of this approach is that attitudes do not always translate into behavior and therefore may not provide an accurate assessment of program success. Given that achieving conservation goals generally relies on understanding and changing human behavior, we argue for the need to assess behavior rather than attitudes as an indicator of conservation outcomes. Psychological theory shows that attitudes and behavior are distinct, but related, concepts. Measuring conservation behaviors involves identifying the target behavior or behaviors and the optimal time to measure and then selecting the most appropriate method of measurement (i.e., direct observation, objective indicators, self-reported behavior, and behavioral intentions) that considers the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. We call for conservation programs to focus on influencing behavior rather than attitudes alone and encourage conservation practitioners and researchers to collect high-quality behavioral data to more effectively inform policy and programs.     

The Importance of Systematic Biology in Defining Units of Conservation

Abstract: Conservation biology is linked inextricably with systematic biology. The principles of systematic biology, however, have not been integrated completely into the practice and principles of conservation biology. Systematists have recognized for some time that a number of evolutionary processes lead to the diversification of lineages. Yet some present units of conservation, such as the evolutionarily significant unit ( Waples 1991), primarily emphasize only one of these processes, adaptation. Allopatric speciation produces biodiversity without requiring any adaptive shift (and consequent adaptive differences between daughter species), so definitions of conservation units that emphasize adaptation may underestimate biodiversity. We estimated the frequency of different modes of speciation for three groups of vertebrates. The frequency of allopatric speciation varies among these groups, but is an important type of speciation in two of the three groups studied. Our results, and the results of other published studies of the frequency of modes of speciation, demonstrate that any unit of conservation defined solely in terms of adaptation is likely to underestimate biological diversity.     

Environmental diversity as a surrogate for species representation

Because many species have not been described and most species ranges have not been mapped, conservation planners often use surrogates for conservation planning, but evidence for surrogate effectiveness is weak. Surrogates are well‐mapped features such as soil types, landforms, occurrences of an easily observed taxon (discrete surrogates), and well‐mapped environmental conditions (continuous surrogate). In the context of reserve selection, the idea is that a set of sites selected to span diversity in the surrogate will efficiently represent most species. Environmental diversity (ED) is a rarely used surrogate that selects sites to efficiently span multivariate ordination space. Because it selects across continuous environmental space, ED should perform better than discrete surrogates (which necessarily ignore within‐bin and between‐bin heterogeneity). Despite this theoretical advantage, ED appears to have performed poorly in previous tests of its ability to identify 50 × 50 km cells that represented vertebrates in Western Europe. Using an improved implementation of ED, we retested ED on Western European birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and combined terrestrial vertebrates. We also tested ED on data sets for plants of Zimbabwe, birds of Spain, and birds of Arizona (United States). Sites selected using ED represented European mammals no better than randomly selected cells, but they represented species in the other 7 data sets with 20% to 84% effectiveness. This far exceeds the performance in previous tests of ED, and exceeds the performance of most discrete surrogates. We believe ED performed poorly in previous tests because those tests considered only a few candidate explanatory variables and used suboptimal forms of ED's selection algorithm. We suggest future work on ED focus on analyses at finer grain sizes more relevant to conservation decisions, explore the effect of selecting the explanatory variables most associated with species turnover, and investigate whether nonclimate abiotic variables can provide useful surrogates in an ED framework.     

Ecological Uses of Vertebrate Indicator Species: A Critique

Abstract: Plant and animal species have been used for decades as indicators of air and water quality and agricultural and range conditions. Increasingly, vertebrates are used to assess population trends and habitat quality for other species. In this paper we review the conceptual bases, assumptions, and published guidelines for selection and use of vertebrates as ecological indicators. We conclude that an absence of precise definitions and procedures, confounded criteria used to select species, and discordance with ecological literature severely weaken the effectiveness and credibility of using vertebrates as ecological indicators. In many cases the use of ecological indicator species is inappropriate, but when necessary, the following recommendations will make their use more rigorous: (1) clearly state assessment goals, (2) use indicators only when other assessment options are unavailable, (3) choose indicator species by explicitly defined criteria that are in accord with assessment goals, (4) include all species that fulfill stated selection criteria (5) know the biology of the indicator in detail, and treat the indicator as a formal estimator in conceptual and statistical models, (6) identify and define sources of subjectivity when selecting monitoring and intetpreting indicator species, (7) submit assessment design, methods of data collection and statistical analysis, interpretations, and recommendations to peer review and (8) direct research at developing an overall strategy for monitoring wildlife that accounts for natural variability in population attributes and incorporates concepts from landscape ecology.     

Incorporating Surrogate Species and Seascape Connectivity to Improve Marine Conservation Outcomes

Conservation focuses on maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, but gaps in our knowledge of species biology and ecological processes often impede progress. For this reason, focal species and habitats are used as surrogates for multispecies conservation, but species‐based approaches are not widely adopted in marine ecosystems. Reserves in the Solomon Islands were designed on the basis of local ecological knowledge to conserve bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) and to protect food security and ecosystem functioning. Bumphead parrotfish are an iconic threatened species and may be a useful surrogate for multispecies conservation. They move across tropical seascapes throughout their life history, in a pattern of habitat use that is shared with many other species. We examined their value as a conservation surrogate and assessed the importance of seascape connectivity (i.e., the physical connectedness of patches in the seascape) among reefs, mangroves, and seagrass to marine reserve performance. Reserves were designed for bumphead parrotfish, but also enhanced the abundance of other species. Integration of local ecological knowledge and seascape connectivity enhanced the abundance of 17 other harvested fish species in local reserves. This result has important implications for ecosystem functioning and local villagers because many of these species perform important ecological processes and provide the foundation for extensive subsistence fisheries. Our findings suggest greater success in maintaining and restoring marine ecosystems may be achieved when they are managed to conserve surrogate species and preserve functional seascape connections. Incorporación de Especies Sustitutas y de Conectividad Marina para Mejorar los Resultados de Conservación     

Gaia's Handmaidens: the Orlog Model for Conservation Biology

Abstract:  The Gaia hypothesis, which proposes that Earth's biota and material environment form a self-regulating system, has been influential in conservation biology, but it has not translated into specific guidelines. Proponents of phylogenetics and ecology often claim primacy over the foundations of conservation biology, a debate that has deep roots in philosophy and science. A more recent claim is that conservation efforts should protect evolutionary processes that will allow diversification. Phylogenetics, ecology, and evolution all have legitimate roles in conservation, when viewed in a temporal perspective. Phylogenetic studies identify the bioheritage of past species radiations, ecology preserves the life-support systems for these lineages in the present, and evolutionary processes allow adaptation of these lineages to novel challenges in the future. The concept of temporal domains in conservation (past, present, future) has an appropriate metaphor in the Norse worldview known as the Orlog. In this body of mythology, three sisters tend the tree of life and fend off a dragon gnawing at the roots. The names of these sisters, Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, translate to Past, Present, and Future. In Viking mythology, the threads of life cannot persist without the cooperation of these sisters. In the science of conservation biology, they represent the handmaidens of Gaia–three scientific disciplines that can succeed only with a spirit of familial cooperation.     

Factors influencing property selection for conservation revolving funds

Finding sustainable ways to increase the amount of private land protected for biodiversity is challenging for many conservation organizations. In some countries, organizations use revolving‐fund programs, whereby land is purchased and then sold to conservation‐minded owners under condition they enter into a conservation covenant or easement. The sale proceeds are used to purchase, protect, and sell additional properties, incrementally increasing the amount of protected private land. Because the effectiveness of this approach relies on selecting appropriate properties, we explored factors currently considered by practitioners and how these are integrated into decision making. We conducted exploratory, semistructured interviews with managers from each of the 5 major revolving funds in Australia. Responses indicated although conservation factors are important, financial and social factors are also highly influential. A major determinant was whether the property could be resold within a reasonable period at a price that replenishes the fund. To facilitate resale, often selected properties include the potential for the construction of a dwelling. Practitioners face with clear trade‐offs between conservation, financial, amenity, and other factors in selecting properties and 3 main challenges: recovering the costs of acquisition, protection, and resale; reselling the property; and meeting conservation goals. Our findings suggest the complexity of these decisions may constrain revolving‐fund effectiveness. Drawing from participant responses, we identified potential strategies to mitigate these risks, such as providing adequate recreational space without jeopardizing ecological assets. We suggest managers could benefit from a shared‐learning and adaptive approach to property selection given the commonalities between programs. Understanding how practitioners deal with complex decisions in the implementation of revolving funds helps identify future research to improve the performance of this conservation tool.     

Effectiveness of Environmental Surrogates for the Selection of Conservation Area Networks

Abstract:  Rapid biodiversity assessment and conservation planning require the use of easily quantified and estimated surrogates for biodiversity. Using data sets from Québec and Queensland, we applied four methods to assess the extent to which environmental surrogates can represent biodiversity components: (1) surrogacy graphs; (2) marginal representation plots; (3) Hamming distance function; and (4) Syrjala statistical test for spatial congruence. For Québec we used 719 faunal and floral species as biodiversity components, and for Queensland we used 2348 plant species. We used four climatic parameter types (annual mean temperature, minimum temperature during the coldest quarter, maximum temperature during the hottest quarter, and annual precipitation), along with slope, elevation, aspect, and soil types, as environmental surrogates. To study the effect of scale, we analyzed the data at seven spatial scales ranging from 0.01° to 0.10° longitude and latitude. At targeted representations of 10% for environmental surrogates and biodiversity components, all four methods indicated that using a full set of environmental surrogates systematically provided better results than selecting areas at random, usually ensuring that ≥90% of the biodiversity components achieved the 10% targets at scales coarser than 0.02°. The performance of surrogates improved with coarser spatial resolutions. Thus, environmental surrogate sets are useful tools for biodiversity conservation planning. A recommended protocol for the use of such surrogates consists of randomly selecting a set of areas for which distributional data are available, identifying an optimal surrogate set based on these areas, and subsequently prioritizing places for conservation based on the optimal surrogate set.     

Setting Practical Conservation Priorities for Birds in the Western Andes of Colombia

We aspired to set conservation priorities in ways that lead to direct conservation actions. Very large‐scale strategic mapping leads to familiar conservation priorities exemplified by biodiversity hotspots. In contrast, tactical conservation actions unfold on much smaller geographical extents and they need to reflect the habitat loss and fragmentation that have sharply restricted where species now live. Our aspirations for direct, practical actions were demanding. First, we identified the global, strategic conservation priorities and then downscaled to practical local actions within the selected priorities. In doing this, we recognized the limitations of incomplete information. We started such a process in Colombia and used the results presented here to implement reforestation of degraded land to prevent the isolation of a large area of cloud forest. We used existing range maps of 171 bird species to identify priority conservation areas that would conserve the greatest number of species at risk in Colombia. By at risk species, we mean those that are endemic and have small ranges. The Western Andes had the highest concentrations of such species—100 in total—but the lowest densities of national parks. We then adjusted the priorities for this region by refining these species ranges by selecting only areas of suitable elevation and remaining habitat. The estimated ranges of these species shrank by 18–100% after accounting for habitat and suitable elevation. Setting conservation priorities on the basis of currently available range maps excluded priority areas in the Western Andes and, by extension, likely elsewhere and for other taxa. By incorporating detailed maps of remaining natural habitats, we made practical recommendations for conservation actions. One recommendation was to restore forest connections to a patch of cloud forest about to become isolated from the main Andes. Establecimiento de Prioridades Prácticas para la Conservación de Aves en los Andes Occidentales de Colombia     

Incorporating geographical and evolutionary rarity into conservation prioritization

Key goals of conservation are to protect both species and the functional and genetic diversity they represent. A strictly species-based approach may underrepresent rare, threatened, or genetically distinct species and overrepresent widespread species. Although reserves are created for a number of reasons, including economic, cultural, and ecological reasons, their efficacy has been measured primarily in terms of how well species richness is protected, and it is useful to compare how well they protect other measures of diversity. We used Proteaceae species-occurrence data in the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa to illustrate differences in the spatial distribution of species and evolutionary diversity estimated from a new maximum-likelihood molecular phylogeny. We calculated species richness, phylogenetic diversity (i.e., summed phylogenetic branch lengths in a site), and a site-aggregated measure of biogeographically weighted evolutionary distinctiveness (i.e., an abundance weighted measure that captures the unique proportion of the phylogenetic tree a species represents) for sites throughout the Cape Floristic Region. Species richness and phylogenetic diversity values were highly correlated for sites in the region, but species richness was concentrated at a few sites that underrepresented the much more spatially extensive distribution of phylogenetic diversity. Biogeographically weighted evolutionary diversity produced a scheme of prioritization distinct from the other 2 metrics and highlighted southern sites as conservation priorities. In these sites, the high values of biogeographically weighted evolutionary distinctiveness were the result of a nonrandom relation between evolutionary distinctiveness and geographical rarity, where rare species also tended to have high levels of evolutionary distinctiveness. Such distinct and rare species are of particular concern, but are not captured by conservation schemes that focus on species richness or phylogenetic diversity alone.     

An Evaluation of Threatened Species Categorization Systems Used on the American Continent

Abstract:  Endangered species lists are important tools in conservation. It is essential that these lists be prepared using categorization systems that objectively assess species extinction risk. To determine which threatened species categorization system is the most appropriate and the virtues and limitations of systems used on the American continent, we evaluated 25 categorization systems from 20 countries. These systems included examples of international lists, most national systems used on the American continent, and some systems independently proposed by academics. We based our assessment on 15 characteristics that categorization systems should have, in terms of categories, criteria, and other relevant issues, in order to evaluate species conservation status objectively. Of all evaluated systems, the current World Conservation Union system is the most suitable for assessing species extinction risk. Most categorization systems, but particularly national systems, have serious deficiencies and need to be improved substantially. We recommend governments use three types of lists: (1) threatened species lists constructed following a sound categorization system, (2) lists of species of conservation priority, and (3) lists that serve as normative tools (e.g., Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). Additionally, the information used to categorize species should be explicit and available to the public. To make the most of threatened species lists in conservation, it is imperative that all countries use the same categorization system.     

Use of Abundance of One Species as a Surrogate for Abundance of Others

Abstract: Indicator species concepts have a long history in conservation biology. Arguments in favor of these approaches generally stress expediency and assume efficacy. We tested the premise that the abundance patterns of one species can be used to infer those of other species. Our data consisted of 72,495 bird observations on 55 species across 1046 plots distributed across 30 sub basins. We analyzed abundance patterns at two spatial scales (plot and sub basin) and for empirical and a priori grouping. There were few significant indicator relationships at either scale or under either grouping rule, and those few we found did not explain a substantial portion of the abundance of other species. Coupled with the lack of proven efficacy for species surrogacy in the literature, our results indicate the utility of indicators and similar types of surrogate approaches must be demonstrated rather than assumed.     

Effectiveness of Vegetation Surrogates for Parasitoid Wasps in Reserve Selection

Abstract:  Selecting suitable nature reserves is a continuing challenge in conservation, particularly for target groups that are time-consuming to survey, species rich, and extinction prone. One such group is the parasitoid Hymenoptera, which have been excluded from conservation planning. If basic characteristics of habitats or vegetation could be used as reliable surrogates of specific target taxa, this would greatly facilitate appropriate reserve selection. We identified a range of potential habitat indicators of the species richness of pimpline parasitoid communities (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae: Pimplinae, Diacritinae, Poemeniinae) and tested their efficiency at capturing the observed diversity in a group of small woodlands in the agricultural landscape of the Vale of York (United Kingdom). Eight of the 18 vegetation-based reserve-selection strategies were significantly better at parasitoid species inclusion than random selection of areas. The best strategy maximized richness of tree species over the entire reserve network through complementarity. This strategy omitted only 2–3 species more (out of 38 captured in the landscape as a whole) than selections derived from the parasitoid survey data. In general, strategies worked equally well at capturing species richness and rarity. Our results suggest that vegetation data as a surrogate for species richness could prove an informative tool in parasitoid conservation, but further work is needed to test how broadly applicable these indicators may be.     

Improving species-based area protection in Antarctica

Area protection is a major mechanism deployed for environmental conservation in Antarctica. Yet, the Antarctic protected areas network is widely acknowledged as inadequate, in part because the criteria for area protection south of 60°S are not fully applied. The most poorly explored of these criteria is the type locality of species, which provides the primary legal means for Antarctic species-based area protection and a method for conserving species even if little is known about their habitat or distribution. The type locality criterion has not been systematically assessed since its incorporation into the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty in 1991, so the extent to which the criterion is being met or might be useful for area protection is largely unknown. To address the matter, we created and analyzed a comprehensive database of Antarctic type localities of terrestrial and lacustrine lichens, plants, and animals. We compiled the database via a literature search of key taxonomic and geographic terms and then analyzed the distance between type localities identifiable to a ≤ 25km² resolution and current Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs) and human infrastructure. We used a distance-clustering approach for localities outside current ASPAs to determine candidate protected areas that could contain these unprotected localities. Of the 386 type localities analyzed, 108 were within or overlapped current ASPAs. Inclusion of the remaining 278 type localities in the ASPA network would require the designation of a further 105 protected areas. Twenty-four of these areas included human infrastructure disturbance. Given the slow rate of ASPA designation, growing pace of human impacts on the continent, and the management burden associated with ASPAs, we propose ways in which the type locality criterion might best be deployed. These include a comprehensive, systematic conservation planning approach and an alternative emphasis on the habitat of species, rather than on a single locality.