Identifying Priority Areas for the Conservation of Avifauna of Golestan Province

Protecting a representative array of habitats is currently the most effective tool for biodiversity conservation. Hence, identifying the most important areas for conservation is a critical task and a priority. We selected reserves in the Golestan Province based on their importance for avifauna. To achieve this, the distributions of 129 bird species within the province were modeled through ecological niche modelling. Applying simulated annealing algorithm, conservation patches were then selected to cover 5%, 10%, 15%, and 20% of the distribution ranges of the studied species. Two scenarios were considered: 1- reserve selection without considering current protected areas network in Golestan Province to conserve 5, 10, 15 and 20% of the species geographic distributions in Golestan province, 2- supplementation of current protected areas network to conserve different percentages of species’ distributions. Results showed to achieve these conservation goals, 1066 km2 (5.23%), 2161 km2 (10.60%), 2308 km2 (16.23%) and 4562 km2 (22.40%) of the province surface area would be respectively required to be protected. The overlap between the existing protected areas network and the selected conservation patches in this study based on the above-mentioned conservation goals were 14.80%, 21.08%, 31/21% and 43.20% respectively. Among the current protected areas of the province Gomishan and Qazanqayeh protected areas had the most overlap with the proposed conservation networks, while Azizabad and Khosh-Yeylagh protected areas were not selected as conservation important areas. The overlap between the selected conservation netwoks and the existing protected areas of the province was less than 50 percent. Results of second scenario indicated that the expansion of the protected areas network by 5.6, 16.6, 40.1 and 72.7 percent are necessary to meet 5, 10, 15 and 20 percent conservation targets respectively.