BIODIVERSITYRESEARCH

Wilderness and future conservationpriorities in Australia

James E. M. Watson1*, Richard A. Fuller1, Alexander W. T. Watson2,

Brendan G. Mackey3, Kerrie A. Wilson1, Hedley S. Grantham1, Matthew

Turner4, Carissa J. Klein1, Josie Carwardine1, Liana N. Joseph1 and

Hugh P. Possingham1

INTRODUCTION

Funds available for investment in terrestrial biodiversity

conservation are small in comparison with the resources

available to those interested in using the land for other

purposes (James et al., 1999). Conservation biologists and

planners have reacted to this challenge by identifying priority

areas to manage for conservation (Margules & Pressey, 2000).

Many of these approaches prioritize areas using criteria such as

maximizing the number of threatened species and/or ecosys-

tems (Myers et al., 2000; Dietz & Czech, 2005). While this

threat-based approach to spatial prioritization, targeting a

1The University of Queensland, The Ecology

Centre, St Lucia, Qld 4072, 2The Wilderness

Society, 2 Delhi Street, West Perth, WA 6005,3The Fenner School of Environment & Society,

The Australian National University,

Canberra, ACT 0200, 4The Wilderness

Society, 118 King William Street, Adelaide, SA

5000, Australia

*Correspondence: James E.M. Watson, The

University of Queensland, The Ecology

Centre, St Lucia, Qld 4072, Australia.

E-mail: james.jameswatson@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

Aim Most approaches to conservation prioritization are focused on biodiversity

features that are already threatened. While this is necessary in the face of

accelerating anthropogenic threats, there have been calls to conserve large intact

landscapes, often termed ‘wilderness’, to ensure the long-term persistence of

biodiversity. In this study, we examine the consequences of directing conservation

expenditure using a threat-based framework for wilderness conservation.

Location The Australian continent.

Methods We measured the degree of congruence between the extent of

wilderness and the Australian protected area network in 2000 and 2006, which

was established using a threat-based systematic planning framework. We also

assessed priority areas for future reserve acquisitions identified by the Australian

government under the current framework.

Results In 2000, 14% of Australia’s wilderness was under formal protection, while

the protected area network covered only 8.5% of the continent, suggesting a

historical bias towards wilderness protection. However, the expansion of the

reserve system from 2000 to 2006 was biased towards non-wilderness areas.

Moreover, 90% of the wilderness that was protected over this period comprised

areas not primarily designated for biodiversity conservation. We found a

significant (P < 0.05) negative relationship between bioregions considered to be

a priority for future reserve prioritization and the amount of wilderness they

contain.

Main conclusions While there is an urgent need to overcome past biases in

reserve network design so as to better protect poorly represented species and

habitats, prioritization approaches should not become so reactive as to ignore the

role that large, intact landscapes play in conserving biodiversity, especially in a

time of human-induced climate change. This can be achieved by using current or

future threats rather than past threats to prioritize areas, and by incorporating key

ecological processes and costs of acquisition and management within the planning

framework.

Keywords

Australia, biodiversity, conservation planning, protected areas, wilderness.

Diversity and Distributions, (Diversity Distrib.) (2009) 15, 1028–1036

DOI: 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2009.00601.x1028 www.blackwellpublishing.com/ddi ª 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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snapshot of vulnerable biodiversity and landscapes, is logical in

the short term given the accelerating anthropogenic threats

and past impacts (Brooks et al., 2002; Spring et al., 2007), it

may not be sufficient to ensure the long-term persistence of

biodiversity at regional and continental scales in the face of

future threats and limited funding (Pressey et al., 2004; Bottrill

et al., 2008; Lee & Jetz, 2008). In response, there have been calls

to conserve large intact areas, often termed ‘wilderness’,

alongside hotspots of threatened biodiversity (Rothenberg &

Ulvaeus, 2001; Mittermeier et al., 2003; Woinarksi et al., 2007;

Mackey et al., 2008). Wilderness areas are important for the

long-term persistence of biodiversity, supporting high levels of

species richness and endemism, containing large populations

of many common but declining species (Woinarksi et al., 1992,

2007; Judd et al., 2008; Watson et al., 2008a,b) and sustaining

key ecological and evolutionary processes, which is considered

critical in a time of human-forced climate change (Soule et al.,

2006; Woinarksi et al., 2007; Mackey et al., 2008).

While there is some debate over the appropriateness of the

term ‘wilderness’ in the conservation literature (Rose, 1996;

Sarkar, 1999), it has been used widely to describe large,

intact landscapes in Australia for at least three decades (e.g.,

Kirkpatrick & Haney, 1980; Lesslie et al., 1988; Mackey et al.,

1999) and elsewhere (Mittermeier et al., 2003). We follow Lesslie

et al. (1988) and Mackey et al. (1999) in defining wilderness as

large areas that have experienced minimal habitat loss. This

definition means that many wilderness areas may have had a long

history of human occupation, as is the case in Australia, and the

term does not preclude (or ignore) human presence (Lesslie

et al., 1988; Mackey et al., 1999; Woinarksi et al., 2007).

We know of no previous formal analysis that considers the

implications for wilderness conservation of using a commonly

used systematic prioritization approach based on past threat.

Using Australia as an example, we quantify the extent to which

the national protected area network captures wilderness, and

how plans for its expansion based on the current Australian

government’s threat-based prioritization approach will capture

wilderness in the future (Commonwealth of Australia, 2005).

Australia is a good place to study this problem for a number of

reasons. First, it is globally significant for its biodiversity

(Lindenmayer, 2007). Second, it is a country that still contains

extensive areas of intact landscapes (Lesslie et al., 1988;

Mittermeier et al., 2003). Third, Australia is arguably the first

country to start using principles of systematic planning in

designing a reserve system (Watson et al., 2008a,b).

The National Reserve System (NRS), Australia’s formal and

substantial investment in conservation by government, non-

government organizations and indigenous partners, currently

covers 11.6% of terrestrial Australia (Sattler & Taylor, 2008).

As is the case in many countries, reserves were generally

selected in an ad-hoc manner prior to the mid-1990s (Pressey,

1994; Pressey et al., 2002). However, since 1995, the Australian

Government has applied a systematic planning framework for

prioritizing conservation investments, and has directed NRS

funding based on the criteria of comprehensiveness, adequacy

and representativeness (Commonwealth of Australia, 1997,

2005). Recently, a continent-wide, government-led initiative

identified priority regions for conservation investments based

on the criteria that combined information on (i) gaps in the

extent of protected area coverage within each of 85 biogeo-

graphical regions (hereafter bioregions) as a percentage of the

bioregion reserved, (ii) representation: the degree of coverage

of broadly defined vegetation types within those bioregions

and (iii) past threats: the level of threat to biodiversity gauged

from land-use change, known extinctions and invasive plant

abundance (Commonwealth of Australia, 2005).

In this study, we examine the extent on which the current

configuration of Australia’s protected area network captures

wilderness and assess how this has changed between 2000 and

2006, a time period where new reserve acquisitions began to be

based on the principles outlined above (Commonwealth of

Australia, 2005). We also examine how future priorities for

NRS expansion based on Commonwealth of Australia (2005)

analyses are likely to capture wilderness areas.

METHODS

Wilderness mapping

There are many ways to quantify wilderness (e.g., Kirkpatrick

& Haney, 1980; Lesslie et al., 1988; Mackey et al., 1999;

Mittermeier et al., 2003), most of which involve the use of a

proxy measure related to human disturbance and size. As

mentioned in the Introduction, we followed Lesslie et al.

(1988) and Mackey et al. (1999) in defining wilderness as areas

that have experienced minimal habitat loss and fragmentation,

and can, therefore, be identified largely on the condition and

extent of native vegetation cover. This definition means that

the biodiversity in wilderness areas may still suffer from other

threatening processes, such as invasive species or changed fire

regimes, and may have had a long history of human

occupation, as is the case in Australia (Lesslie et al., 1988;

Mackey et al., 1999; Woinarksi et al., 2007).

We assessed the extent of wilderness across Australia using a

measure of vegetation intactness, as determined by the Vegeta-

tion Assets, States, and Transitions (VAST) framework of

Thackway & Lesslie (2006). The VAST framework classifies

vegetation by degree of human modification from pre-European

settlement conditions as a series of states using the criteria of

floristic composition, vegetation structure and regenerative

capacity and, as such, is a useful way of spatially mapping the

location of intact vegetation (Thackway & Lesslie, 2006, 2008;

Klein et al., 2009a). Seven intactness classes are recognized and a

national assessment has been completed with data analysed at a

spatial resolution of 1 km2, drawing upon various available

continental data sources (Lesslie & Maslen, 1995; Lesslie et al.,

2008). The VAST classes range from 0 (unmodified natural bare

ground) and I (unmodified native vegetation), to VI (trans-

formed to non-vegetation land use). We followed Klein et al.

(2009a) and only used VAST classes 0 and I to identify wilderness

areas, because these classes identify areas dominated by native

vegetation and where there has been no extensive clearing or

Wilderness and conservation priorities

Diversity and Distributions, 15, 1028–1036, ª 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1029

fragmentation from land-use activities. Following Mittermeier

et al. (2003), we defined any intact landscape polygons with an

area > 10,000 km2 as wilderness (Fig. 1a). We calculated the

proportional coverage by wilderness of each of 85 bioregions

identified in Australia by the Interim Biogeographic Regionali-

sation of Australia (IBRA Version 6.1). These regions were

originally derived by compiling geographical information on

continental scale gradients and patterns in climate, substrate,

landform, vegetation and fauna (Commonwealth of Australia,

2005). The bioregions were then ranked by percentage of

wilderness. For ease of comparison, we arbitrarily defined

biogeographical regions with > 70% wilderness as ‘intact’, those

with between 30 and 70% coverage by wilderness as ‘moderately

intact’ and those with < 30 wilderness as ‘transformed’.

The current protected area network

The location of the 2000 and 2006 protected area networks was

obtained from the 2000 and 2006 Collaborative Australia

Protected Area Database (http://www.environment.gov.au;

Fig. 1b). To determine the degree of statistical congruence

between wilderness and the current protected area network, we

calculated the proportion of land classified as (i) wilderness

(VAST classes 0 and I), and (ii) falling within protected areas

in 2000 and 2006 within each 1-grid cell across Australia. To

reduce effects of variation in area among grid cells, coastal cells

with < 50% of their area intersecting mainland Australia were

excluded from the analysis.

Future protected area priorities

We used the 85 bioregions across Australia to map the results

of the Australian Government’s prioritization analysis (Com-

monwealth of Australia, 2005). Their analysis identified

priority regions for conservation investments using three

criteria: (1) the reservation status within each of the 85

bioregions as a percentage of the bioregion reserved in four

classes (< 1, 1–5, 5–10 and > 10% coverage); (2) the ‘com-

prehensiveness’ of the region’s protected areas in terms of how

well they protected broadly defined vegetation types (nil, low,

moderate, high and no reserves) and (3) the level of threat to

biodiversity within each of the 85 biogeographical regions,

assessed in four classes according to (i) how much the region

has been modified, (ii) existing land use, (iii) known extinc-

tions and (iv) abundance of invasive weeds (Commonwealth of

Australia, 2005). The results of their analysis categorized each

bioregion as either (a) low priority (24 regions), (b) medium

priority (22), (c) high priority (20) or (d) very high priority

(19) for future conservation investment (Fig. 1c).

RESULTS

Wilderness mapping

Some 2.93 million km2 (38%) of Australia was classified as

wilderness, including not only landscapes dominated by large

Very high priorityHigh priorityMedium priorityLow priority

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 1 The 85 biogeographical regions across Australia used in

this analysis, shaded by (a) wilderness land, based on data at 1 km2

resolution (see text for details), (b) the location of the 2000 Na-

tional Reserve system (black) and additions between the period

2000 and 2006 (grey) according to the Collaborative Australia

Protected Area Database and (c) degree of priority for additions to

the Australian protected area network in a recent review by the

Australian Government (Commonwealth of Australia, 2005).

J. E. M. Watson et al.

1030 Diversity and Distributions, 15, 1028–1036, ª 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

contiguous areas > 10,000 km2 of intact native vegetation, but

also naturally bare ground (Fig. 1a; Table 1). There was a

strong, statistically significant relationship between the size of a

bioregion and the area of wilderness within it (rs = 0.51,

n = 85, P < 0.001), but no statistically significant relationship

between the proportion of wilderness per bioregion and the

bioregion’s size (rs = )0.02, n = 85, P = 0.882). The majority

of wilderness is located in northern and western Australia

(regions remote from the major southern urban centres), and

there is a wide variation in the amount of wilderness in a

bioregion, ranging from no wilderness (22 bioregions) to

almost complete coverage (99.8%, the Gibson Desert bio-

region, Western Australia), with an average proportion of

29.98% (SD = 32.8%).

The 2006 protected area network

The protected area network of 2006 encompasses around

895,326 km2 (11.6%) of Australia, capturing 546,234 km2 of

wilderness (Table 1). Of the land within the protected area

network, 61.14% is wilderness and 18.67% of total wilderness

extent falls within a protected area. Separating protected areas

into strict conservation reserves (i.e., IUCN management

categories I–IV) and reserves that are managed for other

activities (recreation, forestry) as well as conservation (i.e.,

IUCN management categories V–VI), we found that 52% of

strict reserves comprised wilderness compared to 82% for

reserves that have less focus on conservation.

The degree of congruence between coverage by protected

areas and wilderness varied with IUCN management category.

Strict protected area coverage showed no clear relationship

with wilderness coverage at the scale of a 1� grid (Fig. 2a), with

many well-protected grid cells containing little or no wilder-

ness. Indeed, there was a spike in the proportion of a cell

protected at zero wilderness coverage, with 20 of 685 1� grid

cells having > 20% strict protected areas within them but zero

wilderness coverage. In contrast, coverage by less strict

conservation reserves increased with wilderness area (Fig. 2b),

rising rapidly at high proportions of wilderness. Overall, the

relationship between the two variables (proportion of grid cell

that is protected and proportion of grid cell that is wilderness)

was weak and positive (Fig. 2).

Changes in the reserve system 2000–2006

Between 2000 and 2006, the NRS grew by 242,729 km2, a

37% increase. Of this, 127,850 km2 was wilderness, which

increased the proportion of wilderness captured in the NRS by

Table 1 Changes in the size and amount

of wilderness protected (in km2) in

Australia’s National Reserve System

between 2000 and 2006. Data for the NRS

was based on 2000 and 2006 Collaborative

Australia Protected Area Database (http://

www.environment.gov.au). See text for

details for how wilderness was defined.

Total area Wilderness only

Transformed

only

Australia 7,687,345 2,925,137 4,762,208

Protected area system 2000 652,597 418,384 (14%*, 64%�) 234,213

2000 IUCN I–IV reserves 524,953 312,271 (11%, 59%) 212,682

2000 IUCN V–VI reserves 127,644 106,112 (3%, 83%) 21,531

Protected area system 2006 895,326 546,234 (19%, 61%) 349,091

2006 IUCN I–IV reserves 634,001 332,501 (11%, 52%) 301,500

2006 IUCN V–VI reserves 261,324 213,733 (7%, 82%) 47,591

*Proportion of wilderness compared to the total wilderness in Australia.�Proportion of wilderness captured in the NRS compared to the size of the NRS.

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

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port

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Pro

port

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d

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1Proportion wilderness

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

(a)

(b)

Figure 2 The relationship between wilderness coverage in 1º grid

cells across Australia and coverage by protected areas in 2006 in (a)

IUCN management categories I–IV, and (b) IUCN management

categories V and VI.

Wilderness and conservation priorities

Diversity and Distributions, 15, 1028–1036, ª 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1031

approximately one-third – from 14.3 to 18.67%. Strict reserves

(those in IUCN management categories I–VI) grew by

109,048 km2 (a 20.8% increase) although only 20,230 km2

was wilderness. This means that 16% of the area placed under

strict protection in this period was wilderness (Table 1). The

other 84% gained were reserved as multiple use protected areas

(IUCN management categories V and VI).

Future reserve priorities

Bioregions identified by the Australian Government as a high

priority for addition to Australia’s protected area network are

concentrated largely to the east of the remaining contiguous

tracts of wilderness (Fig. 1a, c). There was a statistically

significant negative correlation between the proportion of

wilderness in each of the 85 bioregions and the level of priority

for future conservation investment (rs = )0.232, n = 85,

P = 0.032; Fig. 3). Regions considered to have high conserva-

tion priority had a lower proportion of wilderness than those

that had a low conservation priority (Fig. 3). Only two ‘intact’

bioregions (bioregions with < 70% wilderness coverage) were

considered as ‘very high’ priority for establishing new NRS

protected areas. These were the Tanami bioregion in Western

Australia and the Central Arnhem bioregion in Northern

Territory (Fig. 4). Seven ‘intact’ bioregions were ranked ‘lowest

priority’ for future reservation.

DISCUSSION

Between 2000 and 2006 (a period when the Australian

government began to implement a framework based on

principles of systematic conservation planning), there was a

substantial (37%) increase in the size of the NRS (Table 1).

This growth was biased away from wilderness, partially

redressing the earlier imbalance, and is a consequence of the

systematic framework employed by the Australian government

(Commonwealth of Australia, 1997, 2005; Possingham et al.,

2006). This framework emphasized threatened species and

ecosystems, and hence land acquired for the NRS was generally

in areas significantly modified by humans. Only 16% of the

wilderness that was formally gazetted for conservation during

that period was allocated to strict conservation reserves (IUCN

categories I–IV). This shows that where wilderness is captured

by a threat-based prioritization, it is placed almost entirely

(> 84%) in multiple use reserves, where activities such as

mining, forestry and grazing can still occur.

Our analysis has shown that the Australian Government’s

current prioritization for expansion of the protected area

network in the 85 bioregions will continue to redress the

historical bias in favour of wilderness areas and hence reduce

the proportional coverage of wilderness areas in the future

(Fig. 4). The current priorities emphasize the locations of

extinct species and regions with high levels of land clearing

(Fig. 1c). Examples of intact regions that are considered

biodiversity rich but currently low priority include the

northern part of the Great Western Woodlands and the

Kimberley Region (Judd et al., 2008; Woinarksi et al., 2007).

The Great Western Woodland is one of the most floristically

diverse areas in the world and a centre of plant endemism

(Judd et al., 2008). The Kimberley region is now considered

the last refuge for almost all of Australia’s endangered northern

fauna (Woinarksi et al., 2007). Both of these regions are

currently being degraded by land-use change caused by

commercial development (particularly mining and agriculture)

and the number of threatened species is increasing (Woinarksi

et al., 2007; Watson et al., 2008a,b). However, these regions

have a small number of large reserves that place their

Figure 3 Coverage of wilderness in biogeographical regions and

the total wilderness, in each of the four classes of priority for

additions to the protected area network (Commonwealth of

Australia, 2005). Circles are mean percentage (±1 SE) wilderness

per bioregion and bars show total wilderness area.

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

Very highHighMediumLow

Nu

mb

er o

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RA

reg

ion

s

NRS prioritisation

> 70% wilderness in bioregion(high intactness)

30–70% of wilderness in bioregion(moderate intactness)< 30% wilderness in bioregion(low intactness)

Figure 4 Wilderness and prioritization in

each of Australia’s 85 bioregions. We

defined a bioregion as (a) ‘intact’ if it had

> 70% cover of VAST Classes O and I, (b)

‘moderately intact’ if between 30 and 70%

and (c) ‘not intact’ if < 30%. VAST

categories are defined in Thackway &

Lesslie (2006) VAST framework.

J. E. M. Watson et al.

1032 Diversity and Distributions, 15, 1028–1036, ª 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

reservation threshold just beyond 10%. Under the current

strategy, these regions will only have a high priority for new

conservation investments once they have become subject to

more extensive habitat loss and fragmentation and contain

many threatened species or ecosystems.

We believe that the current focus on protecting threatened

ecosystems in already highly modified landscapes over the

period 2000–2006 has both benefits and costs. The biggest

benefit is that by starting to embrace principles of systematic

conservation planning, the Australian government is facilitat-

ing a defensible planning process that aims to redress past

ad-hoc approaches to reserve selection and gazettal. It would

have been easier for the Australian government to obtain large

increases in the protected area network by simply acquiring

large areas of habitat that do not have threatened species or

ecosystems, but are cheap to purchase and manage. By

focusing on transformed landscapes, the Australian govern-

ment has made substantial steps in preserving some of

Australia’s most vulnerable species.

However, such an exclusive focus on threat-based planning

may be problematic for a number of reasons. First, just because

an area is wilderness does not mean its biodiversity is not

threatened: many of Australia’s intact landscapes are becoming

altered because of land-use change and grazing by introduced

animals in the north and west of Australia (Woinarksi et al.,

2007; Watson et al., 2008a,b). Under the current strategy, these

regions will only have a higher priority for new conservation

investments once they have become subject to extensive habitat

loss and fragmentation. A related problem is that assuming

threatening processes that have occurred in the past will likely

be a good surrogate for future threats may prove incorrect. For

example, recent legislation has effectively halted land clearing

in the landscapes that have been extensively cleared of native

vegetation in Australia; most clearing now occurs in the intact

landscapes of northern Australia (Woinarksi et al., 2007).

A second problem is that it is increasingly apparent that

many ecological processes, such as species and ecological

community responses to resource fluxes and climatic changes,

trophic interactions and natural disturbance regimes (e.g.,

fire), operate over large spatial scales (Thompson, 2005; Soule

et al., 2006; Mackey et al., 2008), far greater than the size of the

majority of protected areas (the mean and median size of a

reserve in the NRS are 102 and 0.99 km2, respectively). The

on-going protection of large intact areas is important to allow

evolutionary and co-evolutionary processes to continue

(Archer, 2002; Thompson, 2005; Bradshaw & Holzapfel,

2006), including maintaining genetic diversity (Mayr, 2001)

and ecological function (Geider et al., 2001), and shaping the

geographical structure of species and assemblages (Gaston &

Fuller, 2008). Moreover, the resilience of ecosystems to

environmental change, such as human-induced climate

change, will depend on adaptive responses to changing

environmental conditions (Parmesan, 2006; Skelly et al.,

2007; Mackey et al., 2008) and the ability of species to locate

and exploit refugia during periods where conditions become

temporarily marginal (Morton et al., 1995; Gillson & Willis,

2004). Conservation effort over correspondingly large, intact

areas is necessary to ensure that such processes continue to

operate.

Addressing these issues requires conservation planners to

consider large-scale actions and integrate criteria that reflect

more fully the principles of systematic conservation planning.

The following are a series of suggestions to overcome the

problems noted above. These suggestions encapsulate new

research challenges, based on recent developments in conser-

vation planning (Possingham et al., 2006; Knight & Cowling,

2007; Leroux et al., 2007; Pressey et al., 2007; Moilanen, 2008;

Carwardine et al., 2009) and increased knowledge of the

processes that structure and sustain biodiversity at regional

scales (Soule et al., 2006; Woinarksi et al., 2007).

First, we recommend that quantifying and spatially mapping

important ecological and evolutionary processes that drive the

distribution and abundance of biodiversity be explicitly

incorporated into prioritizations (see Rouget et al., 2006;

Klein et al., 2009a, b). Data and methods are now becoming

available that attempt to quantify some of these processes at

appropriate spatial scales (Pressey et al., 2007; Mackey et al.,

2008), but to our knowledge, incorporating all known major

ecological and evolutionary processes in a large-scale terrestrial

prioritization exercise has not been achieved (Pressey et al.,

2007).

Second, we can predict the magnitude and distribution of

future threats and incorporate them into the spatial prioriti-

zation framework rather than simply using past threats as a

surrogate (Wilson et al., 2005; McLachlan et al., 2007; Pressey

et al., 2007). Predicting future patterns of land-use change, as

well as more pervasive threats such as fire, grazing by feral

animals and invasive species, is critical for this type of dynamic

threat analysis (Burgman et al., 2007; Rounsevell et al., 2006).

Moreover, using known extinct species as a surrogate for threat

is also problematic, as a whole suite of threatened species occur

in areas where there are few or no known extinctions

(Woinarksi et al., 2007; Watson et al., 2008a,b). It must be

noted that while there are some good examples of research

starting to develop the distribution of future threat (e.g.

Burgman et al., 2007), long-term predictions are likely to be

highly problematic, given the uncertainty around future social,

economic and political dimensions of land-use scenarios.

A third improvement is to incorporate realistic constraints,

particularly the financial costs of acquiring and managing a

reserve network, into the prioritization framework. There are

an increasing number of studies that provide evidence that

incorporating these constraints into the prioritization frame-

work increases the likely biodiversity benefits (Ando et al.,

1998; Naidoo et al., 2006) and avoids costly conservation

mistakes (Carwardine et al., 2008). While recent studies (e.g.,

Klein et al., 2009a, b) have started to incorporate cost in spatial

prioritization exercises in Australia, these have yet to be

integrated into Australia’s conservation planning framework.

Are the future priorities affordable and cost-effective? It is

important to note that wilderness areas in Australia, and

elsewhere, are typically associated with lower land values than

Wilderness and conservation priorities

Diversity and Distributions, 15, 1028–1036, ª 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1033

transformed areas, and are often relatively inexpensive con-

servation investments (Mittermeier et al., 2003).

A fourth, related improvement would be to map and analyse a

range of social and economic factors that define opportunities

for conservation in conjunction with information on conserva-

tion values, threats and costs (Noss et al., 2002; Cowling et al.,

2004; Knight et al., 2006; Knight & Cowling, 2007). Under-

standing the social and economic context could be a critical

determinant of the effective implementation of a conservation

strategic plan. Such an analysis could evaluate the willingness of

landowners to be involved in conservation initiatives on private

land (Winter et al., 2005) or engage in land stewardship

programmes (Knight et al., 2006). It may also reveal that

wilderness areas in Australia represent considerable opportuni-

ties for conservation as they are either cost-effective to acquire,

or the landholders may be willing to engage in partnership with

government to manage country that is often remote and rugged.

The appropriate instrument for protection may also be revealed

through an assessment of the aspirations of landholders and

society in general. For example, large, intact areas are likely to

reveal high levels of cultural and recreational importance, and

therefore, opportunities for these qualities to be realized while

achieving biodiversity conservation goals might be desired.

We predict that once these improvements have been

incorporated into prioritization exercises, there will be a better

balance between planning that identifies and protects threa-

tened species and ecosystems in already highly fragmented

landscapes and planning that identifies and protects important

areas of large, intact landscapes that still contain most of their

conservation values. It is important to note that these

improvements will not simply lead to wilderness being prior-

itized over landscapes that contain threatened species – it will

just ensure that the ecological values of both fragmented and

intact systems are considered in a priority setting system. This is

relevant to all regions where wilderness areas remain alongside

areas that have been altered by anthropogenic forces. These

regions include the boreal forest biome, the deserts of

central Asia and north Africa, the Congo Basin forests and

Amazonia.

CONCLUSION

Given the limited conservation budgets, there is often a trade-

off between strategies that take advantage of cost-effective

opportunities, such as wilderness areas, and threat-based

strategies that target the most degraded and vulnerable areas

(Spring et al., 2007). In many circumstances, the best strategy

is likely to be a mixture of both (Gillson & Willis, 2004; Spring

et al., 2007). The Australian government has begun to redress

the historical bias of protected areas towards wilderness during

the period 2000–2006 by gazetting habitats in landscapes that

have been historically transformed and contain threatened

species. We have shown that the planned future expansion of

the reserve system in Australia will continue this trend. We

believe that in so doing, the framework may have under-

emphasized the conservation benefits provided by protecting

large intact landscapes, which for Australia are globally

significant. Future systematic planning in countries that still

contain wilderness areas should integrate strategies that focus

on protecting threatened species and landscapes with those

that seek to proactively protect biodiversity assets provided by

existing wilderness areas. Analytically, this can be achieved by

applying predictive models that better forecast future threats

rather than using past threats as a surrogate, mapping and

incorporating ecological and evolutionary processes and

including the costs of acquisition and management within

the planning framework. By including this type of proactive

planning analyses, a balanced reserve system may be planned

that will conserve threatened species and ecosystems while also

taking into account some of the big conservation opportunities

that wilderness areas present.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank the Applied Environmental Decision Analysis

Research Hub at The University of Queensland for funding

this research. We also thank Dan Segan, Steven Holness,

Martin Taylor, Rob Lesslie, Michael Soule, Nick Haby, Trudy

O’Connor, Martine Maron and Barry Traill for their comment

and discussion. We also thank H. Recher and two anonymous

referees for suggestions that greatly improved this manuscript.

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BIOSKETCH

James Watson is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of

Queensland, with interests in biogeography, conservation and

landscape ecology. His particular interests include understand-

ing the effects of habitat degradation on biodiversity in a

time of climate change, and ways to prioritize conservation

investment.

Editor: Brendan Wintle

J. E. M. Watson et al.

1036 Diversity and Distributions, 15, 1028–1036, ª 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd