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Systematic conservation planning has become a standard approach globally, but prioritization of conservation efforts hardly considers species traits in decision making. This can be important for species persistence and thus adequacy of the conservation plan. Here, we developed and validated a novel approach of incorporating trophic information into a systematic conservation planning framework. We demonstrate the benefits of this approach using fish data from Europe's second largest river, the Danube. Our results show that adding trophic information leads to a different spatial configuration of priority areas at no additional cost. This can enhance identification of priority refugia for species in the lower position of the trophic web while simultaneously identifying areas that represent a more diverse species pool. Our methodological approach to incorporating species traits into systematic conservation planning is generally applicable, irrespective of realm, geographical area, and species composition and can potentially lead to more adequate conservation plans. ; SL was supported by ARC DECRA fellowship, project number DE130100565. VH was supported by a Ramon y Cajal contract (RYC‐2013‐13979) funded by the Spanish Government.

The world´s largest network of protected areas—Natura 2000 (N2000)—has been implemented to protect Europe´s biodiversity. N2000 is built upon two cornerstones, the Birds Directive, which lists 691 bird species (plus one additional bird genus with no further classification) and the Habitats Directive, which lists next to a variety of species, 233 habitat types to be protected. There is evidence of the positive impact of the Directives on the EU´s biodiversity, although the overall improvement reported for species in favourable condition in the last assessment was low. However, most of the assessments are species focused, while habitats have received very little attention. Here we developed a generic workflow, which we exemplified for Germany, to assess the status of habitat coverage within the N2000 network combining information from publicly available data sources. Applying the workflow allows identification of gaps in habitat protection, followed by the prioritization of potential areas of high protection value using the conservation planning software Marxan. We found that, in Germany, N2000 covers all target habitats. However, common habitats were proportionally underrepresented relative to rare ones, which contrasts with studies focussing on the representation of species. Moreover, the German case study suggests that especially highly protected areas (i.e. covered by more than 90% with N2000 sites) build an excellent basis towards a cost-effective and efficient conservation network. Our workflow provides a generic approach to deal with the common problem of missing habitat distribution data outside of N2000 sites, information which is however crucial for managers to plan conservation actions appropriately across Europe. To avoid a biased representation of habitat types within N2000, our results underpin the importance of defining qualitative and quantitative conservation targets which will allow assesment of the trajectory of habitat protection in Europe as well as adjustment of the network accordingly—a future necessity in the light of climate change.

The European Union (EU) has made significant conservation efforts in the last two decades, guided by the Birds and Habitats Directives, currently under evaluation. Despite these efforts a large proportion of priority species are still in unfavorable condition and continue declining. For this reason, a thoughtful review of the implementation of conservation efforts in Europe is needed to identify potential causes behind this poor effectiveness. We compiled information on the distribution of all conservation funds under the LIFE-Nature, the main financial tool for conservation in Europe. We found that LIFE-Nature has not adequately covered continental conservation needs. The majority of funds have been directed toward nonthreatened species or regions of low conservation priority. Given the limited resources available, two key aspects are in urgent need for revision and improvement. First, the distribution of funds should be guided by continental and global conservation needs and planned at the EU scale. Second, new mechanisms are required to set conservation priorities in a dynamic fashion, rather than relying on fixed lists (i.e., the Directives' Annexes) that may rapidly become outdated. These improvements would require new mechanisms to set priorities and redistribution of conservation efforts, supported by adequate policy and a more effective top-down control on investment. ; Peer Reviewed

1. Integrating ecosystem services (ESs) in landscape planning can help to identify conservation opportunities by finding co‐benefits between biodiversity conservation and the maintenance of regulating and cultural ecosystem services. The adequate integration of ESs needs careful consideration of potential trade‐offs, however, especially between provisioning services and biodiversity conservation (e.g. the potentially negative consequences of agricultural water extraction within areas important for the maintenance of biodiversity). These trade‐offs have been overlooked in systematic spatial planning to date, especially in freshwater systems. 2. MARXAN WITH ZONES was used to identify priority areas for the conservation of freshwater biodiversity (139 species of freshwater fish, turtles, and waterbirds) and the provision of freshwater ESs in the Daly River, northern Australia. Four different surrogates for ESs were mapped, including those potentially incompatible with conservation goals (i.e. groundwater provision for agriculture and recreational fisheries) and those that are more compatible with conservation (i.e. flood regulation by riparian forests; provision of perennial water). The spatial allocation of multiple management zones was prioritized: (i) three conservation zones, aiming to represent freshwater biodiversity and compatible ESs to enhance co‐benefits; and (ii) two production zones, where access to provisioning ESs could be granted. The representation of ESs obtained when using the multi‐zoning approach was compared with that achieved with a single management zone approach. The comparison was performed across different representation targets. 3. Different results were found with low and high targets for ESs. With low targets (25% of all ESs), the trade‐offs avoided were more evident, with up to 56% less representation of incompatible ESs within conservation zones. 4. Multi‐zone planning could help decision makers respond better to the increasingly complex catchment management context, caused by an increasing demand for provisioning services and a diminishing availability of resources, as well as manage and plan for challenges in other realms facing similar problems. ; Funding support was provided by: the Ramon y Cajal Program, funded by the Spanish Government (RYC‐2013‐13979 to VH); the Australian Research Council (Discovery Grant DP120103353 to SL and MK; DECRA DE130100565 to SL); the Australian Government Department of Environment through the National Environmental Science Program Northern Australia Environmental Resources Hub; and the Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University.

In response to the processes threatening biodiversity such as habitat loss, effective selection of priority conservation areas is required. However, reserve selection methods usually ignore the drivers of future habitat changes, thus compromising the effectiveness of conservation. In this work, we formulated an approach to explicitly quantify the impact of fire on conservation areas, considering such disturbance as a driver of land-cover changes. The estimated fire impact was integrated as a constraint in the reserve selection process to tackle the likely threats or opportunities that fire disturbance might cause to the targeted species depending on their habitat requirements. In this way, we selected conservation areas in a fire-prone Mediterranean region for two bird assemblages: forest and open-habitat species. Differences in conservation areas selected before and after integrating the impact of fire in the reserve selection process were assessed. Integration of fire impact for forest species moved preferences towards areas that were less prone to burn. However, a larger area was required to achieve the same conservation goals. Conversely, integration of fire impacts for open-habitat species shifted preferences towards conservation areas in locations where the persistence of their required habitat is more likely (i.e. shrublands). In other words, we prioritized the conservation of not only the current distribution of open-habitat birds, but also the disturbance process (i.e. fire) that favours their preferred habitat and distributions in the long term. Finally, this work emphasizes the need to consider the opposing potential impacts of wildfires on species for an effective conservation planning. ; This work has received financial support from the Spanish Government Grants CGL2008-05506-C02-01/BOS, Consolider-Montes CSD2008-00040, the Catalan Government Grant SGR2009-531, the EU-FP7-SCALES project and CGL2011-29539/BOS BIONOVEL project.

The European Union (EU) has made significant conservation efforts in the last two decades, guided by the Birds and Habitats Directives, currently under evaluation. Despite these efforts a large proportion of priority species are still in unfavorable condition and continue declining. For this reason, a thoughtful review of the implementation of conservation efforts in Europe is needed to identify potential causes behind this poor effectiveness. We compiled information on the distribution of all conservation funds under the LIFE‐Nature, the main financial tool for conservation in Europe. We found that LIFE‐Nature has not adequately covered continental conservation needs. The majority of funds have been directed toward nonthreatened species or regions of low conservation priority. Given the limited resources available, two key aspects are in urgent need for revision and improvement. First, the distribution of funds should be guided by continental and global conservation needs and planned at the EU scale. Second, new mechanisms are required to set conservation priorities in a dynamic fashion, rather than relying on fixed lists (i.e., the Directives' Annexes) that may rapidly become outdated. These improvements would require new mechanisms to set priorities and redistribution of conservation efforts, supported by adequate policy and a more effective top‐down control on investment. ; V.H. and M.C. were supported by two Ramón y Cajal contracts funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RYC‐2013‐13979 and RYC‐2010‐06431, respectivey).

1. Recent advances in freshwater conservation planning allow addressing some of the specific needs of these systems. These include spatial connectivity or propagation of threats along stream networks, essential to ensure the maintenance of ecosystem processes and the biodiversity they sustain. However, these peculiarities make conservation recommendations difficult to implement as they often require considering large areas that cannot be managed under conventional conservation schemes (e.g. strict protection). 2. To facilitate the implementation of conservation in freshwater systems, a multizoning approach with different management zones subject to different management regimes was proposed. So far, this approach has only been used in post hoc exercises where zones were allocated using expert criteria. This might undermine the cost‐effectiveness of conservation recommendations, because both the allocation and extent of these zones have never been optimized using the principles of systematic planning. 3. Here, we demonstrate how to create a catchment multizone plan by using a commonly applied tool in marine and terrestrial realms. We first test the capability of Marxan with Zones to address problems in rivers by using a simulated example and then apply the findings to a real case in the Daly River catchment, northern Australia. We also demonstrate how to address common conservation planning issues, such as accounting for threats or species‐specific connectivity needs in this multizone framework, and evaluate their effects on the spatial distribution and extent of different zones. 4. We found that by prioritizing the allocation of zones subject to different management regimes, we could minimize the total area in need of strict conservation by a twofold factor. This reduction can be further reduced (threefold) when considering species' connectivity needs. The integration of threats helped reduce the average threats of areas selected by a twofold factor. 5. Synthesis and applications . Catchment zoning can help refine conservation recommendations and enhance cost‐effectiveness by prescribing different management regimes informed by ecological needs or distribution of threats. Reliable information on these factors is a key to ensure soundness of planning. Freely available software can be used to implement the approach we demonstrate here. ; We acknowledge funding support provided by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Grant DP120103353 to SL and MK; DECRA DE130100565 to SL), the Australian Government Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, the Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge (TRaCK) Research Hub, the National Environmental Research Program Northern Australia Hub and the Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University.

Monitoring biodiversity is a fundamental tool for its conservation, as it provides information that can guide and eventually improve the effectiveness of management outcomes. Citizen-science is increasingly advocated as a complement to governmental monitoring programs to overcome scarcity of resources and deliver important information for policy-making. In this study, we used the spatial optimization tool Marxan to explore the advantages and limitations of combining government and citizen-science monitoring networks to achieve monitoring targets for bird species of conservation concern for the EU in Catalonia (NE Spain), a region where both schemes are well established. We designed and compared optimal monitoring networks under four different scenarios: (1) the No-constraints scenario simulates a monitoring network built ex novo, assuming no prior monitoring efforts and no spatial constraints to the selection of monitoring sites; (2) the Protected Areas–only, in which the monitoring would occur exclusively within protected areas where resources from the Regional Administration exist – e.g. personnel - that could be mobilized for monitoring surveys; (3) the Protected Areas–Extended recognizes existing monitoring efforts within the network of protected areas, and allows also monitoring efforts outside protected areas to achieve the monitoring targets for the bird species; (4) Protected Areas-Citizen Science recognizes both the existing resources within protected areas as well as the existing citizen-science bird monitoring programs. The four monitoring network schemes sought to cover the distribution of bird species of conservation concern for the EU in Catalonia under different pressure levels (low, medium and high) of the main threats to each species (agricultural intensification, closure of open spaces, forest immaturity, freshwater pollution and urban development) . In our case study, current government efforts, limited to public land and protected areas, were insufficient to cover the whole spectrum of target species and threat levels, reinforcing the assumption that citizen-science data can greatly assist in achieving monitoring targets. However, simply carrying out both government and citizen-science monitoring ad hoc led to inefficiency and duplication of efforts: some species were represented in excess of monitoring targets while several combinations of species-threat levels were under-sampled. Our study highlights the importance of accounting for species threats when designing monitoring networks, since the ability to link detected negative species trends to potential drivers would make the monitoring data more directly useful for policy decisions. Our results also suggest policy-making should concentrate on providing an adequate platform for coordination of government and citizen-science monitoring to minimize duplicated efforts, overcome the biases of each monitoring scheme and obtain the best from both. ; peerReviewed

1. In managing various threats to biodiversity, it is important to prioritize multiple management actions and the levels of effort to apply. However, a spatial conservation prioritization framework that integrates these key aspects, and can be generalized, is still missing. Moreover, assessing the robustness of prioritization frameworks to uncertainty in species responses to management is critical to avoid misallocation of limited resources. Yet, the impact of information uncertainty on prioritization of management effort remains unknown. 2. We present an approach for prioritizing alternative levels of conservation management effort to multiple actions, based on the ecological responses of species to management. We estimated species responses through a structured email‐based expert elicitation process, where we also captured the uncertainty in individual experts' assessments. We identified priority locations and associated level of management of effort of four actions to abate threats to freshwater‐dependent fauna, using a northern Australia case study, and quantified sensitivity of the proposed solution to uncertainty in the answers of each individual expert. 3. Achievement of conservation targets for freshwater‐dependent fauna in the Daly River catchment would require 9.4 million AU$ per year, for a total of approximately 189 million AU$ investment over 20 years. We suggest that this could be best achieved through a mix of aerial shooting of buffalos and pigs, riparian fencing and chemical spraying of weeds, applied at varying levels of management effort in key areas of the catchment. 4. Uncertainty in experts' estimation of species responses to threats causes 60% of the species to achieve 80% of their conservation targets, which was consistent across target levels. 5. Synthesis and applications . Our prioritization approach facilitates the planning of conservation management at fine spatial scales and is applicable to terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms. Plan implementation may require policy instruments ranging from landowner stewardship agreements, market‐based mechanisms and low‐intensity land use management schemes, to regulation of commercial activities within portions of marine protected areas. However, assessing plan sensitivity to uncertainty in species response to management and finding ways of dealing with it in the prioritization rather than ignoring it, as often done, remains vital for effective achievement of conservation objectives. ; This study was conducted with the support of funding from the Australian Research Council (discovery grant no. DP120103353 to S.L., M.J.K. and J.C. and DECRA grant no. DE130100565 to S.L.), the Australian Government's National Environmental Research Program (M.J.K., V.H. and S. L.) and support by Griffith University and the Spanish Government (Ramon y Cajal contract RYC‐2013‐13979 to V.H.).

The design of conservation management plans is a crucial task for ensuring the preservation of ecosys- tems. A conservation plan is typically embodied by two types of decisions: in which areas of a given territory it will be implemented, and how actions against threats will be deployed across these areas. These decisions are usually guided by the resulting ecological benefit, their spatial effectiveness, and their implementation cost. In this paper, we propose a multi-criteria optimization framework, for modeling and solving a mixed integer programming characterization of a multi-action and multi-species conservation management de- sign problem. The optimization tool seeks for a management plan that maximizes ecological benefit and minimizes spatial fragmentation, simultaneously, while ensuring an implementation cost no greater than a given budget. For showing the effectiveness of the methodology, we consider a case study corresponding to a por- tion of the Mitchell river catchment, located in northern Australia, where 31 freshwater fish species are affected by four threats. The attained results show how the methodology exploits the trade-offs among the ecological, spatial and cost criteria, enabling decision-makers to explore and analyze a broad range of conservation plans. Selecting conservation plans in a more informed way allows to obtain the best outcomes from a strategic and operational point of view. ; National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research CONICYT, Chile, through the grant FONDECYT 1180670 1191531 National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research CONICYT, Chile, through the Complex Engineering Systems Institute PIA/BASAL AFB180003 European Union (EU) 691149 MINECO RYC-2013-14262 RYC-2013-13979 CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya

Limited resources available for conservation require prioritizing location and level of conservation management efforts to abate threats to species. Ideally, the optimal level of management effort to allocate to an action should be informed by the species' responses to actions. This would enhance cost-effectiveness of conservation recommendations. How continuous species' responses to varying levels of management effort ('species response curves') affect the cost of abating threats to species is poorly understood, but critical for cost-effective threat management. We developed an optimization approach to prioritize management efforts based on varying species' response curves. We tested our framework in the Mitchell River catchment, northern Australia, to find the optimal level of effort to allocate to restoration of river connectivity and riparian revegetation to improve persistence of freshwater fish species. We compared the results of our analysis against a traditional approach, which assumes that (1) an action is either fully implemented or not; and (2) when the action is fully implemented the species persists; when the action is not implemented, the species goes locally extinct. We showed that by using species response curves we can abate threats to species at budgets up to 20% lower than when applying the traditional approach. Our approach can aid identifying how much effort (i.e., area managed, timeframe of management or budget invested) to allocate to multiple actions, and where, to cost-effectively abate threats to species. This has the potential to significantly improve biodiversity outcomes when resources are limited, by improving precision of on-ground conservation decisions. ; This study was conducted with the support of funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Grant No. DP120103353 to SL, MJK and JC and DECRA Grant No. DE130100565 to SL and Future Fellowship to KAW), the Australian Government's National Environmental Research Program (NERP) (MJK, VH and SL) and Griffith University (VH).

Plans are currently being drafted for the next decade of action on biodiversity-both the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Biodiversity Strategy of the European Union (EU). Freshwater biodiversity is disproportionately threatened and underprioritized relative to the marine and terrestrial biota, despite supporting a richness of species and ecosystems with their own intrinsic value and providing multiple essential ecosystem services. Future policies and strategies must have a greater focus on the unique ecology of freshwater life and its multiple threats, and now is a critical time to reflect on how this may be achieved. We identify priority topics including environmental flows, water quality, invasive species, integrated water resources management, strategic conservation planning, and emerging technologies for freshwater ecosystem monitoring. We synthesize these topics with decades of first-hand experience and recent literature into 14 special recommendations for global freshwater biodiversity conservation based on the successes and setbacks of European policy, management, and research. Applying and following these recommendations will inform and enhance the ability of global and European post-2020 biodiversity agreements to halt and reverse the rapid global decline of freshwater biodiversity.