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Review of the protected area network in Guinea, West Africa, and recommendations for new sites for biodiversity conservation

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Abstract

With only five protected areas dedicated to the conservation of biodiversity (two national parks, one strict nature reserve and two faunal reserves), Guinea has one of the smallest protected area networks in West Africa. As a result, two of the five ecoregions of the country and six of the 14 globally threatened large and medium-sized mammals occurring in Guinea are not found in the national protected area network. To identify areas with high biodiversity that could be included in the national protected area network, we used the Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) methodology. We devised a scoring system to rank the identified KBAs according to their relative conservation significance. We identified a total of 16 KBAs throughout the country. Their proclamation as protected areas would result in the protection of all ecoregions and all but one of Guinea’s globally threatened large and medium-sized mammals. Twelve of the 16 KBAs have the legal status of classified forest, a status that should facilitate the change into formal biodiversity protected areas (IUCN category I–IV). Our analysis indicates that even if only the two areas with the highest conservation significance score, the Ziama and Diécké forests, become formal protected areas, this would provide protection to both the western Guinean lowland forests, one of the most threatened ecoregions in Africa, and to 11 of the 14 threatened large and medium-sized mammals occurring in Guinea.

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Acknowledgment

Thanks to F. Lauginie, T. Brooks and D. Knox who provided ideas for and comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. AGIR project, Haut Niger National Park, B.P. 730, Conakry, Republic of Guinea

    David Brugiere

  2. 1170 Grizzly Peak Blvd, Berkeley, CA, 94708, USA

    Rebecca Kormos

  3. SECA-BRLi Consulting Company, B.P. 4001, 1105 Avenue Pierre Mendes-France, 30001, Nimes Cedex 5, France

    David Brugiere

Authors
  1. David Brugiere
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  2. Rebecca Kormos
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Correspondence to David Brugiere.

Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 5.

Table 5 Scoring system for species recorded in the Guinean Key Biodiversity Areas according to their conservation status (UICN Red List) and their occurrence in the existing Guinean biodiversity protected area network
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Appendix 2

See Tables 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

Table 6 Conservation significance score of KBAs located in Western Guinean Lowland Forests Ecoregion
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Table 7 Conservation significance score of KBAs located in Guinean Montane Forests Ecoregion
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Table 8 Conservation significance score of KBAs located in Guinean Forest-Savanna Mosaic Ecoregion
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Table 9 Conservation significance score of KBAs located in the West Sudanian Savanna Ecoregion
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Table 10 Conservation significance score of KBAs located in the Guinean Mangroves Ecoregion
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Brugiere, D., Kormos, R. Review of the protected area network in Guinea, West Africa, and recommendations for new sites for biodiversity conservation. Biodivers Conserv 18, 847–868 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-008-9508-z

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