| Principal Investigator: | Dr Bob Smith |
|---|---|
| Project dates: | 2003 – |
| Funding: | Darwin Initiative, The World Bank, Russell E. Train Education for Nature Program, the African Wildlife Foundation and the Ministry of Science, Mozambique |
| Collaborators: | Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, DNAC, Swaziland National Trust Commission |
The Maputaland centre of endemism falls within Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland and covers an area of approximately 17,000 km2. Maputaland is internationally recognised for its conservation value, as it forms part of the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany hotspot and contains the iSimangaliso Wetland Park World Heritage Site. However, this biodiversity is threatened by the spread of agriculture and over-harvesting of natural resources, so the three range states are committed to developing a Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA) that will conserve this important region, while also creating jobs through ecotourism and game-ranching.
DICE has worked with these three countries since 2003 to produce the Maputaland Conservation Planning System and this research has helped inform the following developments:
1) Blocking unsuitable development in priority conservation areas
Our research that produced an initial priority conservation area map for the South African section of Maputaland (Smith et al., 2006) was used by Ezemvelo KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife, the provincial conservation agency, to block the development of Eucalyptus plantations in important wetland habitats. This work has subsequently been used to inform Environmental Impact Assessments around Lake Sibaya, South Africa’s largest freshwater lake.
2) Informing the development of a conservation corridor
Our research produced the first systematic conservation planning assessment for Maputaland, based on meeting biodiversity targets, minimising agricultural opportunity costs and maintaining connectivity (Smith et al., 2008). This work was the first to show priority areas in the whole of Maputaland and guided the development of the corridor between Maputo Special Reserve in Mozambique and Tembe Elephant Park in South Africa. This created a 24,770ha transfrontier protected area that reconnects a fragmented elephant population and conserves important wetland and sand forest habitats.
3) Guiding the funding priorities of an international donor
Maputaland forms part of the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany hotspot and is currently the focus of a Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) project, which is investing US$6.5 million in conservation projects between 2010 and 2015. As part of this, the CEPF produced an Ecosystem Profile to identify priority areas within the hotspot and DICE was the only international partner involved in this process. Our work was the basis for the prioritisation process in Maputaland and so identified 3 of the 22 priority areas in the hotspot (Smith et al., 2008).
4) Informing the development of the Key Biodiversity Area approach
Our research in Maputaland informed an article about the Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) approach for identifying priority conservation areas, which argued that the KBA methodology failed to consider the relevant literature on systematic conservation planning (Knight et al., 2007). As a result of this we are currently involved in a project, led by the IUCN WCPA/SSC Joint Taskforce on Biodiversity and Protected Areas, to examine the variables contributing to the correspondence between semi-quantitative rules used to identify “key biodiversity areas” and formal measures of irreplaceability.
5) Building the capacity of the conservation sector in southern Africa
Our work in Maputaland has a strong capacity building focus and we have run conservation planning workshops in all three range states for conservation students, academics and practitioners. In addition, our work funded two scholarships for a Mozambican and South African to undertake the MSc in Conservation Biology at DICE and a PhD studentship for a Mozambican to undertake research at DICE on conservation planning in Maputaland (Nhancale & Smith, 2011).
6) Improving approaches for systematic conservation planning
As part of our work, we have focused on improving technical aspects of systematic conservation planning. This involved producing CLUZ, a user-friendly extension for the Marxan conservation planning software that has been downloaded by 1181 people from 103 countries, and MinPatch, which modifies Marxan outputs to ensure each identified priority area is above a user-specified size threshold (Smith et al., 2010).
Publications
Smith, RJ, Goodman, PS and Matthews, WS (2006). Systematic conservation planning: a review of perceived limitations and an illustration of the benefits using a case study from Maputaland, South Africa. Oryx, 40, 400-410.
Knight, AT, Smith, RJ, Cowling, RM, Desmet, PG, Faith, DP, Ferrier, S, Gelderblom, CM, Grantham, H, Lombard, AT, Maze, K, Nel, JL, Parrish, JD, Pence, GQK, Possingham, HP, Reyers, B, Rouget, M, Roux, D, and Wilson, KA (2007). Improving the Key Biodiversity Areas approach for effective conservation planning. BioScience, 57, 256-261.
Smith, RJ, Easton, J, Nhancale, BA, Armstrong, AJ, Culverwell, J, Dlamini, S, Goodman, PS, Loffler, L, Matthews, WS, Monadjem, A, Mulqueeny, CM, Ngwenya, P, Ntumi, CP, Soto, B and Leader-Williams, N (2008). Designing a transfrontier conservation landscape for the Maputaland centre of endemism using biodiversity, economic and threat data. Biological Conservation, 141, 2127-2138.
Smith, RJ, Veríssimo, D, Leader-Williams, N, Cowling, RM, Knight, AT (2009). Let the locals lead. Nature, 462, 280-281.
Smith, RJ, Di Minin, E, Linke, S, Segan, D and Possingham, HP (2010). An approach for ensuring minimum protected area size in systematic conservation planning. Biological Conservation, 143, 2525-2531.
Smith, RJ, Monadjem, A, Magagula, CN, Mahlaba, TAM (2010). Conservation planning and viability: problems associated with identifying priority sites in Swaziland using species list data. African Journal of Ecology, 48, 709-717.
Nhancale, BA and Smith, RJ (2011). The influence of planning unit characteristics on the efficiency and spatial pattern of systematic conservation planning assessments. Biodiversity and Conservation, 20, 1821-1835.
Outputs
Maputaland Conservation Planning System
Maputaland landcover map
CLUZ homepage – http://anotherbobsmith.wordpress.com/software/cluz/
MinPatch homepage – http://anotherbobsmith.wordpress.com/software/minpatch/