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Systematic conservation planning is a target-driven process for designing protected area systems and other ecological networks. This important topic has been written about extensively in the scientific literature by everyone from data-mining academics to workshop-weary practitioners, with many articles describing how biodiversity data has been used to identify priority areas. This array of publications can be overwhelming and we have long needed an informed synthesis of all this work. Fortunately, this book by Margules and Sarkar does a great deal to fill that gap, providing an important resource for students, academics and practitioners.
The book's first chapter sets the scene nicely and describes an 11 step planning process that starts with stakeholder identification and ends with periodic conservation network reassessment. This chapter also includes a telling example from Sarkar's home state of Texas, where tax exemptions given to landowners for maintaining or restoring natural habitats were worth more than USD 1 billion in 2003. Such funding could help transform conservation in the region but there is no prioritization of where money would...