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We propose an approach to studying the effectiveness of governance arrangements to deal with complexity in forest landscapes. Using a landscape approach and standard performance audit procedures, we (1) describe the interactions among multiple sectoral actors (2) evaluate the effectiveness of governance arrangements to deal with complexity in a forest landscape, and (3) suggest recommendations for more effective multi sectoral forest landscape governance. We conducted a pilot effectiveness audit in the Sendang (Sembilang Lalan Dangku) landscape of South Sumatra, Indonesia. Conservation activities in Sembilang and Dangku need to be reconciled with developments in Lalan; a new feeder port, an established oil processing facility, and expanding oil palm plantations. We found that two sets of governance settings coexist in Sendang. By regulations, governance arrangements are highly centralised around the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. Yet, in implementation, government authorities and their influence are not as stipulated; companies bypass the regulations, informal patronage arrangements have a major influence on outcomes, and there is no effective intermediary institution to liaise with all governance actors. We suggest three possible strategies to rationalise the regulatory framework for more effective implementation. (1) Align the regulations to more closely match implementation (2) invest in additional resources, budgetary, human, technological, and law enforcement (3) a hybrid of the first two with some additional resources and some regulatory changes because major change is expensive and time-consuming. To determine the most appropriate strategy, another audit on the efficiency and economy of each option is required. This research will contribute to alternative mechanism for mitigating conflicts among multi sector governance actors as well as to the body of knowledge.

Sulawesi is an important island for primates. All 17 species that are found there are endemics. The island also includes contact zones between species of macaques (genus Macaca) where hybrids may arise. Sulawesi continues to be deforested, especially in the lowlands most suitable for estate crops and other agricultural products. We carried out an island-wide review of the current extent and rates of deforestation, and the impact this is having on the habitat available to all primates and within macaque hybrid zones. The provinces of West Sulawesi and Southeast Sulawesi suffered the highest rate of deforestation. Macaca ochreata in Southeast Sulawesi and Tarsius pelengensis on Peleng island in Central Sulawesi have lost the most habitat at 14%, followed by M. hecki and M. tonkeana. Forest loss also occurred in all macaque contact zones. The greatest losses occurred at contact zones between the western population of M. tonkeana and M. ochreata. Corn, coffee, cocoa, and oil palm are commodities that are spreading throughout the island. The extent of deforestation in the hybrid zones is alarming, particularly as none of them are represented in protected areas. To help address these problems, a careful integration of conservation and development is suggested, including making trade-offs explicit, and conducting transdisciplinary research on social-ecological systems at the interface of policy and management at local scales.

Tropical forest landscapes are undergoing rapid transition. Rural development aspirations are rising, and land use change is contributing to deforestation, degradation, and biodiversity loss, which threaten the future of tropical forests. Conservation initiatives must deal with complex social, political, and ecological decisions involving trade-offs between the extent of protected areas and quality of conservation. In Cambodia, smallholders and industrial economic land concessions drive deforestation and forest degradation. Rural economic benefits have not kept pace with development aspirations and smallholders are gradually expanding agriculture into protected forests. We examine the drivers and effects of rural forest landscape transitions in Cambodia to identify trade-offs between conservation and development. Using historical trends analysis and information gathered through key informant interviews, we describe how local communities perceive social and ecological changes, and examine the implications of local development aspirations for conservation. We explore three scenarios for the future of conservation in Cambodia, each with different conservation and community development outcomes. We contend that conservation efforts should focus on strengthening governance to meet social and environmental requirements for sustainable forest landscapes. We suggest potential entry points for governance improvements, including working with local decision-makers and fostering collaboration between stakeholders. There is a need for realistic priority setting in contested tropical forest landscapes. Prosperous rural economies are a necessary but not sufficient condition for conservation.

Conflicting policies relating to the management of multi-sectoral, multi-level and multi-actor forest uses often result in ineffective policy implementation. Methods for assessing policy coherence, however, are limited and often require an extensive evidence base which is not always available. In Indonesia, this has often led to conflicts between government agencies and other forest stakeholders. Businesses, NGOs and local communities struggle to comply with all of the conflicting or overlapping regulations that relate to the use of forested landscapes. Even if they succeed, the cost of implementation can be excessive. Improved methods for assessing policy coherence could assist governments and other stakeholders to navigate policy complexity and to avoid the potentially high costs of policies that are antagonistic to one another. We propose an audit of policy coherence at the landscape scale as a way of addressing this problem. We test this idea with an experimental policy audit on the Kampar Peninsula, a peat landscape in Pelalawan district, Riau Province, Indonesia. Indonesia has participated in the UN global peat initiative since 2015 and has created a peat protection policy to control the exploitation of peat with regulation No 57/2016. This regulation and the various instruments devolved from it has been a source of confusion and conflict among stakeholders. We applied commonly accepted performance auditing standards to assess the coherence, effectiveness and efficiency of regulations from other sectors and in different jurisdictions with the new peat regulation No 57/2016 and its derivatives. To aid our audit assessment, we overlaid radar and Landsat images to depict delineations of peat protection and cultivation zones according to different legislation. Our audit revealed incoherent mapping of peat protection zones on the Kampar Peninsula, which has led to ineffective and inefficient implementation of policies. We then propose three alternative protection and cultivation scenarios to that proposed by the government. Our results show that any of these alternative scenarios would provide a policy that is not only more coherent, but that also would result in more effective and efficient policy implementation. This policy audit method should have wide potential application for auditing best practice and policy effectiveness in complex landscapes across the globe and should have immediate application in helping to resolve the current issues on the Kampar Peninsular.

Highlights: • Indonesia’s annual area of forest degradation is equal to deforestation. • Numerous forest restoration initiatives exist but with varying levels of success. • Government control provides a disincentive to restoration initiatives. • Partnerships across multiple scales can enhance FLR learning opportunities.

Landscape approaches attempt to achieve balance amongst multiple goals over long time periods and to adapt to changing conditions. We review project reports and the literature on integrated landscape approaches, and found a lack of documented studies of their long-term effectiveness. The combination of multiple and potentially changing goals presents problems for the conventional measures of impact. We propose more critical use of theories of change and measures of process and progress to complement the conventional impact assessments. Theories of change make the links between project deliverables, outputs, outcomes, and impacts explicit, and allow a full exploration of the landscape context. Landscape approaches are long-term engagements, but short-term process metrics are needed to confirm that progress is being made in negotiation of goals, meaningful stakeholder engagement, existence of connections to policy processes, and effectiveness of governance. Long-term impact metrics are needed to assess progress on achieving landscapes that deliver multiple societal benefits, including conservation, production, and livelihood benefits. Generic criteria for process are proposed, but impact metrics will be highly situation specific and must be derived from an effective process and a credible theory of change.

Integrated approaches to natural resource management are often undermined by fundamental governance weaknesses. We studied governance of a forest landscape in East Lombok, Indonesia. Forest Management Units (Kesatuan Pengelolaan Hutan or KPH) are an institutional mechanism used in Indonesia for coordinating the management of competing sectors in forest landscapes, balancing the interests of government, business, and civil society. Previous reviews of KPHs indicate they are not delivering their potential benefits due to an uncertain legal mandate and inadequate resources. We utilized participatory methods with a broad range of stakeholders in East Lombok to examine how KPHs might improve institutional arrangements to better meet forest landscape goals. We find that KPHs are primarily limited by insufficient integration with other actors in the landscape. Thus, strengthened engagement with other institutions, as well as civil society, is required. Although new governance arrangements that allow for institutional collaboration and community engagement are needed in the long term, there are steps that the East Lombok KPH can take now. Coordinating institutional commitments and engaging civil society to reconcile power asymmetries and build consensus can help promote sustainable outcomes. Our study concludes that improved multi-level, polycentric governance arrangements between government, NGOs, the private sector, and civil society are required to achieve sustainable landscapes in Lombok. The lessons from Lombok can inform forest landscape governance improvements throughout Indonesia and the tropics.

We assess the opportunities and threats posed by small and large-scale mining in Eastern Indonesia. Here, both activities coexist in one landscape: in the Bitung and North Minahasa Districts of North Sulawesi. Each is associated with different development pathways. Both scales of mining have been controversial and are criticized for their environmental and socio-economic impacts. Small-scale mining contributes more to the local economy encouraging local entrepreneurship but yields a lower total financial return. Large-scale mining provides better job security and safer working conditions for employees, but any benefits of capital transformation do not accrue locally. Policy should focus on the formalization of small-scale mining and pay closer attention to the impact of large-scale mining on local communities. The governance of both scales of mining would benefit from a ‘landscapes approach’ to negotiating conservation and development trade-offs.

A new model of small-scale mineral exploitation is being driven by Asian investors in East Cameroon and may be representative of trends elsewhere in Africa. The mines employ nationals of Asian countries and create small Asian communities in remote areas. There is evidence of widespread failure to comply with national mining regulations and few benefits are flowing either to the national government or to local communities. If existing government regulations were enforced, this form of mining could improve livelihoods and living conditions in remote areas. Without good governance it risks facilitating enclaves of uncontrolled resource exploitation.

Decentralizing natural resource management to local people, especially in tropical countries, has become a trend. We review recent evidence for the impacts of decentralization on the biodiversity values of forests and forested landscapes, which encompass most of the biodiversity of the tropics. Few studies document the impact of decentralized management on biodiversity. We conclude that there may be situations where local management is a good option for biodiversity but there are also situations where this is not the case. We advocate increased research to document the impact of local management on biodiversity. We also argue that locally managed forests should be seen as components of landscapes where governance arrangements favor the achievement of a balance between the local livelihood values and the global public goods values of forests.

Landscape approaches are widely applied in attempts to reconcile tradeoffs amongst different actors with conflicting demands on land and water resources. Key principles for landscape approaches have been endorsed by inter-governmental processes dealing with climate change mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity conservation.We review experiences from seven landscapes located in the Congo Basin, Eastern Indonesia and Northern Australia. Landscape initiatives were applied in situations where large-scale extractive industries, local peoples’ livelihoods and global biodiversity objectives were in conflict. We found that common published principles for landscape approaches are not applied systematically in the areas studied. Practitioners draw upon landscape approach principles selectively and adapt them to deal with local conditions. We consider that landscape approaches do not provide silver bullet solutions to these situations nor do they provide an operational framework for large-scale land management. Landscape approaches do, however, provide an organising framework for disentangling the complexity of the landscape and facilitating the investigation of impacts of different courses of action. They enable alternative scenarios for what future landscapes might look like to be investigated and they create the space for multi-stakeholder negotiations. Outcomes from landscape scale approaches are determined by the power differentials amongst stakeholders and the existence, or otherwise, of functional institutions to take decisions and enforce agreements. Landscape approaches cannot overcome disparities in power or entrenched interests nor can they substitute for institutions with authority to establish and legitimise property and resource rights. They can, however, provide a mechanism around which civil society can be mobilised to achieve better land use outcomes. Landscape approaches are successful when they have strong leadership, sustained long-term and facilitated processes, good governance, adequate budgets and adequate metrics for assessing progress. Private sector engagement is necessary and all parties must have sufficient shared interest in outcomes to motivate their participation.

The clearing and subsequent fragmentation of terrestrial ecosystems is commonly acknowledged as a major cause of the decline of biodiversity. These and other predicted responses to habitat fragmentation are derived from theory, which ecologists have tested with empirical approaches ranging from observations to experimental manipulations. These empirical approaches have also identified areas of theory in need of additional development. For example, experimental studies of fragmentation have provided insights such as the key role played by the matrix surrounding fragments, the importance of edge effects, and the impacts of corridors linking fragments with one another. Much less clear, however, is the extent to which these theoretical and empirical studies – while advancing our conceptual understanding of ecological responses to landscape change – help guide management and conservation practice. We review lessons learned from landscape-scale fragmentation experiments and observational studies, present the results of a survey of fragmentation and conservation experts which probed for links and mismatches between fragmentation studies and conservation practice, and discuss how future studies can contribute to conservation practice. Our survey showed that respondents consider fragmentation theory and empirical studies and their findings important for guiding conservation and management practices. The survey also identified that there are disconnects between what is typically studied by fragmentation ecologists and factors that are central to the practice of biodiversity conservation, notably, community-based human dimensions (e.g., economic, social, health issues), policy and governance, ecosystem services, eco-evolutionary responses of species, and interaction of multiple threats to biodiversity and ecosystem processes. We discuss how these disconnects can present opportunities for experiments to continue to provide valuable recommendations for conservation practice in fragmented landscapes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Initiatives to manage landscapes for both biodiversity protection and sustainable development commonly employ participatory methods to exploit the knowledge of citizens. We review five examples of citizen groups engaging with landscape scale conservation initiatives to contribute their knowledge, collect data for monitoring programs, study systems to detect patterns, and test hypotheses on aspects of landscape dynamics. Three are from landscape interventions that deliberately target biodiversity conservation and aim to have sustainable development as a collateral outcome. The other two are driven primarily by concerns for agricultural sustainability with biodiversity conservation as a collateral outcome. All five include programs in which, management agencies support data collection by citizen groups to monitor landscape changes. Situations where citizen groups self-organise to collect data and interpret data to aid in landscape scale decision making are less common and are restricted to landscapes where the inhabitants have a high level of scientific literacy. Given the complexity of landscape processes and the multiple decision makers who influence landscape outcomes we argue that citizen science broadly defined should be an essential element of landscape scale initiatives. Conservation managers should create space for citizen engagement in science and should empower citizen groups to experiment, learn, and adapt their decision-making to improve landscape scale outcomes.

The Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (WTWHA) in Far North Queensland is one of the world’s hotspots of rainforest biodiversity and is an area rich in cultural heritage, with surrounding landscapes important nationally for agriculture and tourism. Like many globally important UNESCO sites, the area is currently experiencing unprecedented rates of population growth and urbanisation hence efficient and effective management action is required to maintain the area’s ecological, cultural and economic values. One of the aims of the Commonwealth Government funded Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility, is to develop a monitoring programme for biodiversity which will include critical indicators of ecosystem health and thresholds of concern to trigger management action. However, a major scientific challenge remains to identify critical indicators and thresholds of concern for the cultural status of both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous local human communities, who inherently form a part of the ecosystem. An additional challenge lies in linking these cultural indicators to ecosystem health. This paper outlines a framework of cooperative research for the generation of a series of linked biophysical and cultural indicators to facilitate the development of effective cooperative Natural Resource Management. Once composed, it is considered that the framework and a consequent monitoring protocol will be appropriate for use within the WTWHA and will be applicable to other protected areas worldwide.

We summarise the contributions of empiricists, modellers, and practitioners in this issue of Biodiversity and Conservation, and highlight the most important areas for fu- ture research on species survival in fragmented landscapes. Under the theme 'uncertainty in research and management', we highlight five areas for future research. First, we know little about the effects of density dependence on the viability of metapopulations, a requirement for fragmented landscapes. Second, successful early attempts suggest that it is worth developing more rigorous calibration methods for population viability analysis with spatially explicit, individual-based models. In particular, the balance between model complexity, ease of calibra- tion, and precision, needs to be addressed. Third, we need to improve methods to discriminate between models, including alternatives to time-series approaches. Fourth, when our ability to reduce model uncertainty is weak, we need to incorporate this uncertainty in population viability analysis. Fifth, population viability analysis and decision analysis can be integrated to make uncertainty an explicit part of the decision process. An important future direction is extending the decision framework to adaptive management. Under the theme 'tools for quantifying risk and predicting species sensitivity to fragmentation', we highlight three areas for future research. First, we need to develop tools to support comparative approaches to pop- ulation viability analysis. Second, population modelling can be used to find rules of thumb to support conservation decisions when very little is known about a species. Rules of thumb need to be extended to the problem of managing for multiple species. Third, species' traits might be useful for predicting sensitivity but predictions could be further refined by considering the relative importance of population processes at different scales. Under the theme 'tools for reassembling fragmented landscapes', we consider the 'focal species' approach, and highlight aspects of the approach that require more rigorous testing. Finally, we highlight two important areas for future research not presented in the previous themes or papers in this volume. First

We present a brief introduction to current attempts to understand and mitigate the effects of fragmentation on species survival. We provide a short overview of the contributions of empiricists, modellers, and practitioners in this issue of Biodiversity and Conservation, which were initiated during a workshop held in Australia in February 2002 on the topic ‘Species Survival in Fragmented Landscapes: Where are we now?’. These contributions address the themes ‘uncertainty in research and management’, ‘tools for quantifying risk and predicting species sensitivity to fragmentation’, and ‘tools for reassembling fragmented landscapes’. A final contribution provides a synthesis across the contributions and highlights the most important areas for future research on species survival in fragmented landscapes.

Recent decades have seen a rapid movement towards decentralising forest rights and tenure to local communities and indigenous groups in both developing and developed nations. Attribution of local and community rights to forests appears to be gathering increasing momentum in many tropical developing countries. Greater local control of forest resources is a response to the failure of government agencies to exercise adequate stewardship over forests and to ensure that the values of all stakeholders are adequately protected. We reviewed evidence of the impact of decentralised forest management on the biodiversity values of forests and conclude that special measures are needed to protect these values. There are trade-offs between shorter-term local needs for forest lands and products and longer-term global needs for biodiversity and other environmental values. We present evidence of local forest management leading to declining forest integrity with negative impacts on both local forest users and the global environment. We advocate greater attention to measures to ensure protection of biodiversity in locally-managed forests.

Results are presented which prioritize areas for potential protection in Quebec on the basis of biodiversity considerations. These results are relevant to the ongoing public discussion in Quebec about designating new parks and refuges so that the province may fulfil its obligations to Canada's Endangered Spaces Campaign. The prioritization algorithm used in this analysis is based on rarity and complementarity. It attempts to sample biodiversity in as area-efficient a way as possible. The biodiversity surrogates used here comprise a subset of 743 species for which data on spatial distributions are publicly available; the analysis begins with 394 species at risk. It is shown that: (i) the existing network of protected areas in Quebec does a poor job of protecting these biodiversity surrogates; (ii) adding adjacent areas to this network will not be the optimal way of protecting these biodiversity surrogates; (iii) many of the areas that have highest priority are in southern Quebec, which has a high human population density; (iv) because of (iii), designating parks may not be economically or sociologically feasible and more adaptive alternative conservation plans will have to be devised; (v) coastal areas, riparian habitats, and other wetlands should have high priority for protection but are currently very inadequately represented in the reserve network; (vi) there is some reason for concern about the clear-cut logging of boreal forests in northern Quebec; and (vii) the islands, Ile d'Anticosti and the Iles-de-la-Madeleine, emerge as being of very significant conservation value and plans for the protection of areas on them should be an immediate goal for biodiversity conservation in Quebec.

The conservation of biological diversity has become one of the important goals of managing for- ests in an ecologically sustainable way. Ecologists and forest resource managers need measures to judge the success or failure of management regimes designed to sustain biological diversity. The relationships between potential indicator species and total biodiversity are not well established. Carefully designed studies are re- quired to test relationships between the presence and abundance of potential indicator species and other taxa and the maintenance of critical ecosystem processes in forests. Other indicators of biological diversity in forests, in addition or as alternatives to indicator species, include what we call structure-based indicators. These are stand-level and landscape-level (spatial) features of forests such as stand structural complexity and plant species composition, connectivity, and heterogeneity. Although the adoption of practices to sustain (or recreate) key characteristics of forest ecosystems appear intuitively sensible and broadly consistent with cur- rent knowledge, information is lacking to determine whether such stand- and landscape-level features of for- ests will serve as successful indices of (and help conserve) biodiversity. Given our limited knowledge of both indicator species and structure-based indicators, we advocate the following four approaches to enhance biodiversity conservation in forests: (1) establish biodiversity priority areas (e.g., reserves) managed prima- rily for the conservation of biological diversity; (2) within production forests, apply structure-based indica- tors including structural complexity, connectivity, and heterogeneity; (3) using multiple conservation strate- gies at multiple spatial scales, spread out risk in wood production forests; and (4) adopt an adaptive management approach to test the validity of structure-based indices of biological diversity by treating man- agement practices as experiments. These approaches would aim to provide new knowledge to managers and improve the effectiveness of current management strategies.

Setting aside protected areas is widely recognized as one of the most effective measures to prevent species from extinction. Accordingly, there has been a tremendous effort by governments worldwide to establish protected areas, resulting in over 100,000 sites, which are set aside, to achieve the 10% target proposed at the Fourth World Park Congress in 1992 in Caracas. The main effort of the European to achieve this target is the Natura 2000 network of protected areas, comprising over 25,000 sites representing 18 % of the area of the 27 Member States of the European Union. The designation of Natura 2000 sites was based on species and habitats listed in the Annexes of the Habitats and Birds Directive. The effectiveness of the selection process and the resulting Natura 2000 network has often been questioned as each country made its designations largely independently and in most cases without considering the theories of optimal reserve site selection. However, the effectiveness of the selection process and the Natura 2000 network has never been explicitly analysed at the European scale. Here we present such an analysis focusing on the representation of Annex II species of the Habitats Directive in the Natura 2000 network relative to a random allocation of species to sites. Our results show that the network is effective in covering target species and minimizing the number of gap species (i.e. species not represented in a single site of the Natura 2000 network). We demonstrate that the representation is uneven among species. Some species are overrepresented and many species are only represented in a low number of sites. We show that this is mainly due to differing patterns in species ranges, as wide-spread species are inevitably represented in many sites, but narrow ranged species are often covered only by a small number of sites in a particular area. Finally, we propose a representation index that detects species that are underrepresented and could be used to direct future conservation efforts.

This Editorial presents the focus, scope and policies of the inaugural issue of Nature Conservation, a new open access, peer-reviewed journal bridging natural sciences, social sciences and hands-on applications in conservation management. The journal covers all aspects of nature conservation and aims particularly at facilitating better interaction between scientists and practitioners. The journal will impose no restrictions on manuscript size or the use of colour. We will use an XML-based editorial workflow and several cutting-edge innovations in publishing and information dissemination. These include semantic mark-up of, and enhancements to published text, data, and extensive cross-linking within the journal and to external sources. We believe the journal will make an important contribution to better linking science and practice, offers rapid, peer-reviewed and flexible publication for authors and unrestricted access to content. The journal Nature Conservation was established within the framework of the European Union's Framework Program 7 large-integrated project SCALES: Securing the Conservation of biodiversity across Administrative Levels and spatial, temporal, and Ecological Scales, www.scales-project.net (grant 226852; Henle et al. 2010).

The intention and practice of conservation reserve selection are different. A major reason for systems of reserves is to sustain biological diversity. This involves protecting examples of as many natural features, e.g. species, communities or environments, as possible. In reality, however, new reserves have rarely been dedicated for their representation of features. Furthermore, the opportunism that has characterized the development of reserve systems can actually jeopardize the representation of all features in reserves through the inefficient allocation of limited resources. More systematic approaches are essential if reserves are to play their role in protecting biodiversity. Some basic principles for conservation planning are emerging from recent systematic procedures for reserve selection. These principles will help to link intention and practice.

The demand for accurate forecasting of the effects of global warming on biodiversity is growing, but current methods for forecasting have limitations. in this article, we compare and discuss the different uses of four forecasting methods: (1) models that consider species individually, (2) niche-theory models that group species by habitat (more specifically, by environmental conditions under which a species can persist or does persist), (3) general circulation models and coupled ocean-atmosphere-biosphere models, and (4) specics-area curve models that consider all species or large aggregates of species. After outlining the different uses and limitations of these methods, we make eight primary suggestions for improving forecasts. We find that greater use of the fossil record and of modern genetic studies would improve forecasting methods. We note a Quaternary conundrum: While current empirical and theoretical ecological results suggest that many species could be at risk from global warming, during the recent ice ages surprisingly few species became extinct. The potential resolution of this conundrum gives insights into the requirements for more accurate and reliable forecasting. Our eight suggestions also point to constructive synergies in the solution to the different problems.

We strongly support initiatives to produce clear, efficient and practical goals for conservation to guide biodiversity planners and decision-makers in governments, agencies, conventions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). However, as things stand there is only limited consensus on global conservation priorities at international level. We believe that the time is now right for scientists and practitioners to work together to develop a commonly adopted blueprint for action.

Current estimates of species extinctions indicate a sharp increase in extinction rates over the past two decades due to human-caused changes in habitats (Korneck & Sukopp 1988, Henle & Streit 1990). The most noticeable and probably most important change is the reduction of the amount of (semi-)natural habitat primarily due to the expansion of agriculture and increased deforestation but also due to urbanization in densly populated Central Europe (Vos & Zonneveld 1993). A cycle of agricultural development followed by overexploitation of the land and destruction of forests has been repeated throughout recorded history. Two-and-a-half millenia ago, Plato voiced his concern about the destruction of the land in his contemporary Attica (Oedekoven 1992).

Papua New Guinea (PNG) has an incredible variety of land and marine ecosystems, including many components of biodiversity that are unique in the world. PNG's land mass constitutes less than one percent of the world's land area, yet estimates suggest that the country has more than 5% of the world's biodiversity. PNG has been recognized therefore as an important region for biodiversity conservation (see Alcorn 1993; Beehler 1993 and references within). Recently, Conservation International (CI) has recognized PNG as one of the small number of critical tropical forest areas for conservation efforts. That priority reflects not just PNG's unique biodiversity but also the fact that sustainable use of PNG's natural resources has become an important issue, particularly relating to its large mineral deposits, oil and natural gas reserves, agricultural potential, and forestry production potential. CI's perspective highlights important principles of conservation priority. PNG, like the other tropical wilderness areas on its priority list, is regarded as an opportunity for effective conservation at relatively low cost, given that these wilderness regions are still largely intact and have low human population density. In our view, realizing such opportunities requires good planning. Biodiversity conservation in PNG can imply low realized opportunity costs or quite high realized opportunity costs, depending on whether biodiversity planning is used to find a balance among society's competing needs through tradeoffs. PNG is a region worthy of urgent conservation planning attention because potential high net benefits for society may be needlessly foreclosed through inefficient planning that does not address conflicts among various needs of society. The risk of losing those potential net benefits is a strong argument for conservation investment in PNG.

A rapid biodiversity assessment ("BioRap") project identified candidate areas for biodiversity protection in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and provides an ongoing evaluation framework for balancing biodiversity conservation and other land use needs. Achieving a biodiversity protection target with minimum opportunity cost was an important outcome given that biodiversity values overlap with forestry production values, and high forgone forestry opportunities would mean significant losses to land owners and the government. Allocation of 16.8% of PNG's land area to some form of biodiversity protection was required, in order to achieve the level of biodiversity representation/persistence that would have been possible using only 10% of the land area if there were no constraints on land allocation and no land use history. This result minimizes potential conflict with forestry production opportunities while also taking account of land use history, human population density and previous conservation assessments. The analysis provides more than a Single set of proposed priority areas. It is a framework for progressively moving towards a country-wide conservation goal, while at the same time providing opportunities to alter the priority area set in light of new knowledge, changes in land use, and/or changes in economic and social conditions.

We describe three challenges for biodiversity planning, which arise from a study in Papua New Guinea, but apply equally to biodiversity planning in general. These are 1) the best use of available data for providing biodiversity surrogate information, 2) the integration of representativeness and persistence goals into the area prioritization process, and 3) implications for the implementation of a conservation plan over time. Each of these problems is linked to the effective use of complementarity. Further, we find that a probabilistic framework for calculating persistence-based complementarity values over time can contribute to resolving each challenge. Probabilities allow for the exploration of a range of possible complementarity values over different planning scenarios, and provide a way to evalua!e biodiversity surrogates. The integration of representativeness and persistence goals, via estimated probabilities of persistence, facilitates the crediting of partial protection provided by sympathetic management. For the selection of priority areas and land use allocation, partial protection may be a "given" or implied by an allocated land use. Such an integration also allows the incorporation of vulnerability/threat information at the level of attributes or areas, incorporating persistence values that may depend on reserve design. As an example of the use of persistence probabilities, we derive an alternative proposed priority area set for PNG. This is based on 1) a goal of 0.99 probability of persistence of all biodiversity surrogate attributes used in the study, 2) an assumption of a 0.10 probability of persistence in the absence of any form of formal protection, and 3) a 0.90 probability of persistence for surrogate attributes in proposed priority areas, assuming formal protection is afforded to them. The calculus of persistence also leads to a proposed system of environmental levies based on biodiversity complementarity values. The assigned levy for an area may change to reflect its changing complementarity value in light of changes to protection status of other areas. We also propose a number of complementarity-based options for a carbon credits framework. These address required principles of additionality and collateral benefits from biodiversity protection. A related biodiversity credits scheme, also based on complementarity, encourages investments in those areas that make greatest ongoing contributions to regional biodiversity representation and persistence. All these new methods point to a new "systematic conservation planning" that is not focused only on selecting sets of areas but utilizes complementarity values and changes in probabilities of persistence for a range of decision making processes. The cornerstone of biodiversity planning, complementarity, no longer reflects only relative amounts of biodiversity but also relative probabilities of persistence.

The distribution of tree species in a large forested area of south-eastern New South Wales, Australia, is predicted from a sample of the forest using statistical models. The resulting maps of probability of occurrence are used to measure the extent to which the existing reserve network represents all species, identify areas likely to have species not represented, and compare the existing reserve network with simulated single large reserves of equivalent total area. A single long narrow rectangle following the steep gradient in rainfall and temperature from the tableland across the ranges to the coast would contain more species than the existing reserve network but no other configuration would contain more. A suite of species not represented in the existing reserve network was identified and the area where those species are likely to occur was mapped. This area is part of the tableland-coast gradient not covered by any existing reserves. If part of this area was to be added to the reserve network, all species would be represented and the reserve network would encompass more species than any single large configuration.

A conservation planning study in Papua New Guinea (PNG) addresses the role of biodiversity surrogates and biodiversity targets, in the context of the trade-offs required for planning given real-world costs and constraints. In a trade-ofts framework, surrogates must be judged in terms of their success in predicting general biodiversity complementarity values ? the amount of additional biodiversity an area can contribute to a protected set. Wrong predictions of low complementarity (and consequent allocation of non-protective land uses) may be more worrisome than wrong predictions of high complementarity (and consequent allocation of protection, perhaps unnecessarily forgoing other land uses benefiting society). Trade-ofts and targets work well when predictions of complementarity are based on surrogate information that is expressed as a continuum of variation. The PNG study used hierarchical variation for environmental domains and vegetation types, and a nominated target then dictated the level within those hierarchies that was used. Internationally-promoted targets provide a potential basis for comparative evaluation of biodiversity protection levels among countries or regions. However, conventional application of percentage targets, in focusing on proportions of total area or on proportions of habitat types, does not serve the goal of biodiversity protection or sustainability well because targets can be miss-used to restrict the amount of biodiversity protected. At the same time, recent complaints about percentage targets are equally misguided in claiming, based on species-area curves, that 10% targets imply 50% extinctions. We apply a new approach to percentage targets in PNG, in which the maximum diversity that could be protected by an unconstrained 10% of the total area of the country becomes the working biodiversity target. Reaching that same biodiversity target may then require more than 10% of the area, because of constraints (e.g., existing reserves) and costs. In the baseline analysis for PNG, we found that hierarchical variation at the level of 564 vegetation types, combined with the 608 environmental domains, could be protected in an unconstrained 10% of the country. This process of determining a biodiversity target also revealed some "must-have" areas for any future conservation plan. Sur.h must-have areas were also identified for a 15%-based target. The satisfaction of the 10%-based target in practice required 16.8% of PNG (Faith et al. 2001a). This low-cost proposed protected set corresponded to greater net benefits relative to our application of two conventional targets approaches.