Abstract

VAZQUEZ, Luis-Bernardo  and  VALENZUELA-GALVAN, David. How well represented are Mexican mammals in the natural protected area network?. Rev. Mex. Biodiv. [online]. 2009, vol.80, n.1, pp.249-258. ISSN 2007-8706.

We evaluated the efficacy and efficiency of the federal network of natural protected areas (NPAs) to represent the species richness of terrestrial mammals. We overlapped a 0.5° x 0.5° grid with data on species richness with the map of NPAs, to determine the proportion of unprotected species. We compared this with equivalent sets of cells, chosen randomly. In addition, through optimization we determined how many additional cells will complement the NPAs and how many cells will represent all species at least once. We found that nearly 1/5 of the total species, 1/3 of the endemics and 1/3 of the threatened species are unprotected. The sets of cells randomly chosen represent more species than the totality of grid cells with NPAs studied. The Baja California Peninsula, Pacific Slope, the Sierra Madre Occidental, and the south of the country (Oaxaca) concentrate the highest number of unprotected species. We found that to complement the grid cells with NPAs 25 additional cells are needed and that a set of 38 cells chosen optimally will be enough to represent all species at least one time. Our results can help to improve the selection of new NPAs to gain in efficacy and efficiency in the representation of still unprotected species.

Keywords : mammal conservation; Mexico; representativeness; gap analysis; complementarity.

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