Table 1 Conservation planning definitions

Conservation planning

The process of identifying, configuring and managing conservation resources and actions to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services

Systematic approaches to planning

Planning stages approximate those in Fig. 1, i.e. the setting of explicit conservation objectives, spatial biological data (typically multiple species and/or habitats), socioeconomic and other datasets, stakeholder consultation [16] and ultimately, the identification of priority areas for the allocation of conservation resources

Core biological principles such as representation and persistence (adequacy; achieved by applying the principles of complementarity, irreplaceability, connectivity and related methods [13]) are considered alongside non-biological considerations, including social and political constraints and opportunities [36, 45]

E.g. The planning process for California’s Marine Life Protection Act in north central California, USA [71]

Systematic conservation planning

In addition to including all above components

(a) The benefits of conservation actions are specified either as threshold amounts of natural features to be represented or as continuous functions with increasing amounts of features; and

(b) the outputs are one or more optimal or near optimal sets of spatially-bounded conservation actions

Plans will necessarily use decision-support tools in the ‘spatial prioritisation’ stages

E.g. the representative areas program for the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia [14]