SePPCon 2024 Keynote Presentation: Towards a Comprehensive Conservation Strategy for Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems

Conservation strategies for plants and animals often differ because of inherent differences in life histories and area requirements. Strategies for ecosystems differ from species-focused efforts. Although conservation programs targeting specific taxa and communities are both worthwhile and necessary, at the end of the day they must all be coordinated to achieve ultimate conservation goals. The fine filter and coarse filter methodologies remain applicable, with the coarse filter having precedents extending back to efforts in the early 20th century to represent all major ecosystem types with complete food webs in large protected areas. Large carnivores and herbivores are well documented to exert top-down regulation, increasing biodiversity, climate resilience, and resistance to biological invasions. Natural disturbance regimes also often require large areas to function effectively. However, conservation of large, connected areas for area-dependent animals presents trade-offs with plant conservation, in part because of differing patterns of beta diversity. Whereas vertebrates, especially carnivores, generally show nestedness, where small reserves contain depauperate subsets of species found in large reserves, plants typically display turnover, where small reserves often hold species not found in other reserves. Thus, a constellation of well-distributed small reserves usually captures more plant species than fewer large reserves. These trade-offs and other conflicts can be resolved through comprehensive conservation planning. I outline such an approach involving the three tracks of special elements, representation, and focal species.