Abstract

LOPEZ PEREZ, Ramón Andrés  and  LOPEZ GARCIA, Armando. Identification of priority conservation sites for reef building corals in Oaxaca State, Mexico. Hidrobiológica [online]. 2008, vol.18, n.3, pp.239-250. ISSN 0188-8897.

Coral reefs worldwide are being destroyed at an alarming rate, therefore it is necessary to overcome the current trend. In order to identify coral-reef conservation areas in the coast of Oaxaca and compare the design suggested by these methods against the one currently proposed by the Parque Nacional Huatulco (PNH). A presence/absence coral-reefs data base was analyzed by taxonomic diversity, hotspot analysis, complementarity algorithms, and random accumulation of reserve sites. There was a lack of concordance between the reserve-selection approaches employed. Cumulative species-site curves indicated that complementarity maximized the rate of accumulation of species, followed by the hotspot and the random accumulation approaches. Just two out of ten sites with conservation priority value, are protected by the PNH. Considering the number of species already protected by the PNH (62.5 %), its design is sub-optimal since: a) it does not include 100 % of the species, b) populations of species necessary to maintain connectivity between eastern Pacific reef systems are excluded, and c) it includes redundant unnecessary sites under the complementarity principle. Besides suggesting coral-reef conservation areas for the coast of Oaxaca, this study aims to encourage research on the design of marine protected areas (MPA) in order to establish a network of MPA which would allow a sustainable management of Mexican reefs.

Keywords : Reserve selection; marine protected areas; conservation; corals; Mexican Pacific.

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