Key Biodiversity Area Special Series
Key Biodiversity Areas
identification in Japan Hotspot
Yoji Natori 1, Mari Kohri 2,
Seiji Hayama 3 & Naamal De Silva 4
1,2 Conservation International
Japan, Shinjuku i-Land Tower 39F, 6-5-1
Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 163-1339, Japan
3 Wild
Bird Society of Japan, 3-9-23 Nishi-gotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141-0031, Japan
4 Conservation
International, 2011 Crystal Drive, Suite 500, Arlington, VA 22202, USA
Email: 1 y.natori@conservation.org
(corresponding author), 2 kohrim@tmu.ac.jp, 3 hayama@wbsj.org,4 n.desilva@conservation.org
Date of publication (online): 06 August 2012
Date of publication (print): 06 August 2012
ISSN 0974-7907 (online) | 0974-7893 (print)
Manuscript details:
Ms # o2999
Received
08 November 2011
Final
revised received 26 December 2011
Finally
accepted 04 June 2012
Citation: Natori Y., M. Kohri,
S. Hayama & N. De Silva (2012). Key Biodiversity
Areas identification in Japan Hotspot. Journal
of Threatened Taxa 4(8): 2797–2805.
Copyright: © Yoji Natori,
Mari Kohri, Seiji Hayama & Naamal De Silva
2012. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 UnportedLicense. JoTT allows unrestricted use of this
article in any medium for non-profit purposes, reproduction and distribution by
providing adequate credit to the authors and the source of publication.
Author Details and Contributions:
Yoji Natori is the Ecosystem Policy Manager at Conservation International Japan. His
current responsibilities include national and international biodiversity
policy, management of a forest restoration project, and mainstreaming of
biodiversity into society including the outreach of KBA. He led the study and
preparation of the manuscript.
Mari Kohri is currently a researcher at Tokyo Metropolitan University and the
principal investigator of a Grant-in-Aid project, “Developing a mapping method
for selecting biodiversity conservation priority area and for invasive species
measures in the oceanic islands” from Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science & Technology. She supported the process as a consultant to CI, and collected
distribution information of KBA trigger species to produce draft KBA mapping.
Seiji Hayama is the Head of Nature
Conservation Office, Wild Bird Society of Japan. He is involved in
conservation, monitoring and research in IBA sites. He also conducts lobbying
activities. He provided information on IBAs to facilitate
the KBA identification process.
Naamal De Silva is the Director of
Conservation Priorities and Outreach at Conservation International. With background in identifying globally significant sites for biodiversity
conservation, her current role includes developing CI’s institutional framework for
identifying geographic priorities and helping to link science staff in CI
headquarters with technical staff in the field. She advised
the study by providing her experiences in the similar exercises in other
countries.
All
the authors participated in a workshop on conservation priority sites in Tokyo
in September 2010.
Acknowledgements: This project benefited from expert information provided by Dr. Masafumi
Matsui, Dr. Kazumi Hosoya, Dr. Nobuo Ishii, Dr. Takuma Hashimoto, Mr. Hiromune
Mitsuhashi, Mr. Mitsuhiko Toda, Mr. Hitoshi Imai, Dr. Sachiko Yasui-Kamijo, Dr.
Yuya Watari, Dr. Ken Sugimura, and Dr. Kazuto Kawakami, and Mr. Takehiko Sato.
Ms Satoko Shirai provided valuable assistance. Conservation International would
like to give special thanks to the Biodiversity Center of Japan, Ministry of
the Environment for allowing use of the data from the National Survey on the
Natural Environment. The project
(non-bird taxa) was made possible by a financial support from Keidanren Nature
Conservation Fund to Conservation International during 2009-2011.
Abstract: Priority sites within Japan Hotspot were
identified using Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) criteria, based on vulnerability
and irreplaceability. The identification process considered 217 trigger species
from mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, freshwater and brackish water fishes
and odonates, and focused on identifying gaps in Japan’s protected-area system.
We identified 228 sites as KBAs and 50 rivers as candidate KBAs. Collectively,
KBAs occupy 18% of the land, about half is not protected. Sites selected include
natural and semi-natural environments, and appropriate form of protection is
site-dependent. Twenty percent of Japanese terrestrial area is already
protected, although to varying degrees, but additional 8% should also receive
protection or proper management to strengthen the conservation of biodiversity
in Japan.
Keywords: conservation priority, Aichi Target, red list, GIS, IBA, Key
Biodiversity Area, KBA, vulnerability, irreplaceability
The Key
Biodiversity Area series documents the application of the concept and showcases
the results from various parts of the world. The series is edited
under the auspices of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas/Species
Survival Commission Joint Task Force on ‘Biodiversity and Protected Areas’,
with the editors supported by BirdLife International,
Conservation International, IUCN, National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, NatureServe, Parks Canada, and PlantlifeInternational.
For images, tables -- click here
INTRODUCTION
The Japanese archipelago stretches
3,000km from the sub-tropics in the south to the sub-Arctic in the north.
Although the four main islands—Hokkaido, Honshu, Shikoku and
Kyushu—account for much of Japan’s land area (approximately 375,000km2),
collections of smaller islands support relatively high levels of biodiversity.
As a heavily populated, industrialized nation, there are few unmodified areas,
but high biodiversity is still seen. Owing to this, the archipelago has been
identified as one of the world’s 35 Biodiversity Hotspots (Mittermeier et al.
2004; Williams et al. 2011) with nearly 2,000 endemic vascular plants (Kato
& Ebihara, 2011; Mittermeier et al. 2004). Besides the more natural
landscapes, human-influenced habitats often made up of paddy-fields and secondary
forests also play an important role in supporting the biodiversity of Japan
(Natori et al. 2011; Washitani, 2001).
There is a wide range of protected area
categories in the Japanese nature conservation system. The major ones include
national parks, quasi-national parks, and prefectural natural areas under the
Natural Parks Law; wildlife protection areas under the Wildlife Protection and
Hunting Law; wilderness areas and nature conservation areas under the Nature
Conservation Law; and forest reserves and forest ecosystem conservation areas
under the Forestry Law. Except for the areas designated under Natural Parks Law
and Nature Conservation Law, designations are mutually complementary and
several designations can commonly overlap. Combining all these areas, the
existing protected areas cover 20% of Japan’s land surface. Additionally, the
Endangered Species Law provides for the protection of designated species, and
some associated habitat areas have been designated for protection. The Law for
Protection of Cultural Properties, which was established much earlier than the
Endangered Species Law, also protects species and sites of scientific
importance (called “natural monuments”), some of which are threatened.
The selection of these existing
protected areas is however not based on systematic biodiversity assessments.
Therefore, important sites for biodiversity need to be identified
systematically so that all such sites are known and preferably become
protected. Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) are globally important sites for
biodiversity conservation, identified based on two criteria: vulnerability and
irreplaceability (Langhammer et al. 2007). It is a species-based site-selection
methodology, but with the aim of site conservation. The most significant sites
for bird conservation have been identified using these criteria, and there are
167 Important Bird Areas (IBAs) in Japan (Wild Bird Society of Japan, 2010).
The KBA identification process adds to IBAs by bringing other taxa into
consideration.
The major questions we addressed were,
“Where are gaps in Japanese protected-area system that deserve protection or
proper management? And what particularly significant biodiversity occurs in
existing protected areas?” Our focus was less on the assessment of the performance
of the existing protected areas, but more on identifying the parts of the land
that still need to be protected, i.e., highlighting
existing gaps.
METHODS
The standard global set of criteria of
vulnerability and irreplaceability (Langhammer et al. 2007) was used in
selecting trigger species (Table
1). The KBA selection process took into account all terrestrial vertebrate
taxa (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fresh- and brackish-water fish)
and odonates (Table 2). For the
taxa of which the IUCN Red List is incomplete or outdated, the more recent and
comprehensive compilation of Japan’s Red Lists were used (see below for a
further discussion). When finalizing the lists of trigger species (especially
when adding species that are not IUCN threatened species), we consulted with a
few experts regarding the appropriateness.
The study built on the earlier work of
IBA identification (Wild Bird Society of Japan, 2010), and we adopted all IBAs
as KBAs. Fish and odonates were included in the analysis to give emphasis to
freshwater systems, which are under-represented in the national protected-area
network.
Vulnerability
We used the IUCN threatened species
list (IUCN, 2010) to define the vulnerability of trigger species of mammals and
amphibians. We considered the information on threatened status of these two
taxa to be up to date, because the global assessments have only recently been
completed. Since IBAs were treated as KBAs automatically, bird trigger species
used for IBA identification were also KBA trigger species. For other taxa, the
IUCN list is incomplete and/or in need of updating. Thus, we supplemented the
IUCN list with the Japan’s national red lists (Ministry of the Environment,
2006, 2007). In doing so, we only considered those species endemic to Japan
since these assessments represent the global status of such species (as
recommended by Eken et al. (2004) p. 1114). Where the IUCN category differed
from the national one, the national category was given precedence since we considered that Japan’s
national lists were more up to date and carried higher accountability for
species endemic to Japan.
Irreplaceability
The Irreplaceability criteria were
applied for mammals, birds and amphibians only. We used the range sizes of
mammalian and amphibian species from the Global Assessments (IUCN, 2009), and
only those with global ranges of smaller than 50,000 km2 were used (i.e., restricted-range sub-criterion). Since population
information is not available for these taxa, we applied the irreplaceability
criterion to only those species with known occurrence in well-defined
localities, such as islands.
For birds, as was the case with
vulnerability, the IBA trigger species were also KBA trigger species. IBA
defined irreplaceability sub-criteria in restricted range,
congregation/aggregation and biome-restriction. Unlike mammals and amphibians,
the irreplaceability criterion alone was used to trigger KBAs identification
for birds. For the purpose of counting trigger species in this paper, the
species included in the vulnerability trigger species were not included in
irreplaceability trigger species.
Although irreplaceability has not been
defined for other taxa, many species likely to trigger sites under the
irreplaceability criteria are in any case likely to also trigger identification
of sites under the vulnerability criteria. This is especially the case in an
insular nation like Japan.
Data sources
The species presence information was
obtained from the “National Survey on the Natural Environment,” conducted by
the Japanese Ministry of the Environment (MOE) since 1973 (Biodiversity Center
of Japan, 2008). Detailed presence information (in approximately 1km x 1km
cells, or the “third mesh” in Japanese standard gridding system) on threatened
species was used with permission from the Biodiversity Center of the MOE.
Published journal articles supplemented this information, particularly for bats
and odonates. The “Important Wetlands 500” sites (Ministry of the Environment,
2001) that had been selected for the presence of the vulnerability trigger
species were also included.
KBA Identification and Delineation
We
built the identification and delineation process on the existing IBAs. To incorporate
other taxa, protected areas that encompassed the locations of trigger species
for non-avian taxa were first adopted as KBAs. Protected areas were not divided
when delineating KBAs. We considered the following designations as protected
areas for the purposes of KBA identification: national parks, quasi-national
parks, prefectural natural parks, wilderness areas, nature conservation areas,
wildlife protection areas (both national and prefectural), and forest ecosystem
reserves.
If the presence data of the trigger
species were located outside IBA or existing protected-area boundaries,
vegetation maps (Ministry of the Environment; available online: http://www.biodic.go.jp/english/kiso/fnd_f.html)
and municipal boundaries were used to help define KBA boundaries.
RESULTS
We identified 228 KBAs, covering over
68,000km2 (Image 1). Some KBAs extended into marine environment to
account for trigger species that are dependent on brackish environment and
shorelines. The terrestrial part covers a total of 66,000km2,
equaling 17.6% of the land area (Table
3). The islands stand out as particularly important conservation priorities.
Western Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku were low in percent of land in KBAs.
Overall, about 30,000km2 of the KBA extent is not protected. In
addition, 50 rivers were identified as candidate KBAs for the presence of
trigger species of fish and odonates. The specification of their boundaries is
left to future work with more information from the sites.
All previously identified IBAs were
included. Some IBAs were grouped; e.g. the Izu Islands KBA represents a group
of eight IBAs. Many KBAs were delineated by expanding IBAs to include the
presence localities of non-bird taxa and to incorporate existing protected-area
boundaries. Seventy-seven sites were added in KBA triggered by other taxa
(Table 4).
Alliance for Zero Extinction sites
(AZEs) are a subset of KBAs
that are identified by the presence of highly threatened species (CR or EN in
the IUCN Red List) known to occur only in single sites globally. There are six
AZEs identified in Japan (AZE, 2010). All of them were also identified as KBAs
triggered by species other than those used to identify AZEs. Table 5 lists only five AZEs.
The sixth AZE, Yatsugatake, has been identified for a species of conifer (Picea
koyamae), which was a taxon not considered here for KBA identification, but
the site was identified as KBA based on the presence of other trigger species.
Only small fractions of five AZEs, Echigo Plain, Oki Island, Tsushima Islands,
Tokunoshima Island, Yambaru, are currently protected. In addition to the
existing six AZEs, three
KBAs may be considered candidates for new AZEs: Kumejima Island
(one AZE trigger species), Ogasawara
Islands (four AZE trigger species) and Yaeyama Islands (three AZE trigger
species).
The highest numbers of trigger species
found at single KBAs were 24 on Yambaru, followed by 23 on the Yaeyama Islands
and 19 on the Amami Islands (Table
6); all of which are in the Nansei Islands. Furenko-Nemuro in Hokkaido was
the next richest with 14 trigger species. The majority (194 KBAs, 84%),
however, were triggered by five species or fewer.
Seven trigger species triggered 15 or
more KBAs: Dymecodon pilirostris, Heteroscelus brevipes, Pipistrellus
endoi, Myotis pruinosus, Anas platyrhynchos, Columba
janthina and Lestes japonicas. Not surprisingly, however, the
majority of trigger species triggered only a few KBAs (Table 6), because many
trigger species are endemic to specific islands.
DISCUSSION
Gaps
The most important gaps in the
protected area network were found to be the Nansei Islands, a string of islands
extending southwest from southern tip of Kyushu, such as Amami Islands and
Yambaru. A more detailed identification of priority sites within this island
chain has been performed (WWF Japan, 2009), which should facilitate more
focused local conservation actions. Freshwater (and brackish water) systems
were also found to be generally under-represented in protected areas; e.g.
northern Hokkaido and western Japan. Unprotected KBAs were identified not only
in mountainous and other more natural habitats, but also in semi-natural and
agricultural areas; e.g. Echigo Plain, Noto Peninsula and Sanuki Plain. Taking into
consideration the varying threats to and natural and social conditions of the
areas identified as KBAs, the most appropriate form of protection, including
the type of protected-area designation, should be determined on site-specific
bases.
Caveat and Limitations
This analysis used existing
protected-area boundaries where they contained locality records of trigger
species and did not refine boundaries further. KBAs boundaries, if geographically
overlapped with existing protected areas, could be delineated larger than they
would be in absence of such protected areas. This was done in consideration to
management efficiency and with the idea that there is no need to reduce the
area of protection if the protection is already committed in the area covering
KBAs. The delineation of KBA boundaries outside protected areas were done in
ways to minimize adding to KBAs. This means that the priority site for new
protection covers 8% of Japan’s land is a stronger message for conservation
actions than total area covered by KBAs is 18% of Japan’s land.
We are aware of several limitations of
this first analysis of KBA in Japan, and we describe three of them here. First,
we recognize that the list of taxa included in the analysis is incomplete. In
particular, grassland systems are not well represented, since, for example,
plants and butterflies were not included as the trigger species.
This is not to say, however, that
important sites for these taxa have not been selected as KBAs. Indeed, KBAs
identified here include the top ten sites for plant endemism in Japan (Kato
& Ebihara, 2011). This suggests that many key sites meeting the
irreplaceability criterion for plants have likely been included in the KBAs
identified by this analysis.
Second, the degree of actual protection
provided by the existing protected areas to the KBAs identified here should be
viewed with caution. We expect that those types of protected-area designation
used to define protected areas in this analysis provide some level of deterrent
against harmful developments. However, it should be kept in mind that many of
them do not provide sufficient enforceable protection. There are zonings within
given types of protected area providing different levels of protection.
However, this analysis did not distinguish these differences in protection; i.e., in effect, we considered all areas inside the boundaries
of existing protected areas to be protected equally. This differs from the
treatment of protected-area designation as applied to IBAs by Wild Bird Society
of Japan, which considers as protected only those parts of protected areas with
the higher protected status. In consideration of actual implementation and
enforcement, these differences should be more carefully considered. Such
refined analysis is subject of future development, and will result in larger
gaps than shown here.
Third, river systems are important and
no less than 50 rivers had the presence of trigger species. Currently the
entire river stretches are selected as candidate KBAs. Connectivity from upstream
to downstream, as well as fragility of the riverine ecosystems to human
alteration, poses a challenge in delineating KBAs in rivers. Although precise
delineations are yet to be done, the intention is to draw attention to
freshwater systems of potential importance to stimulate conservation actions.
The selection of KBA relied on
presence-only data. The KBA map only shows the areas known to be important. It
does not, by any means, indicate that areas outside these KBAs were excluded
because they were assessed and were found to be of low conservation values.
Rather, this indicates that they are not included in KBAs because there was
insufficient information to justify their inclusion. Most areas simply have not
been surveyed. As new information becomes available, additional areas equally
important as the KBAs identified here may be found.
Information on important sites, such as
KBAs, must be communicated to local authorities. To bridge effectively sites of
global conservation importance to on-the-ground conservation actions at local
scales, communicating the global importance in local context will become
increasingly important.
Future Priorities
Developing capacity in GIS for
conservation purposes is important in both selecting the sites at finer scales
so that they can be proposed as part of formal protection programs and in
providing updated information to enable periodic review of KBAs. For this
purpose, the next related development will be to operationalize the
Conservation GIS Consortium that will provide the platform for collecting and
exchanging biogeographic information in ways that are safe and reliable for
both information providers and users.
In 2010, the international community
agreed to expand effectively managed protected area network (at least to 17% of
the terrestrial area; Aichi Target 11) and to avoid extinction and improve the
status of known threatened species (Aichi Target 12) under the Convention on
Biological Diversity’s Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 (see
http://www.cbd.int/sp/targets/). Currently, protected areas in Japan
collectively cover 20% of land area, but this KBA identification revealed that
additional 8% of the land should be protected or properly manged. As additional
taxa (e.g., plants and butterflies) are included in
the analysis, the number and the area of KBAs will certainly increase. To
achieve these global Aichi Targets, this KBA analysis suggests that Japan’s
national target should seek securing appropriate management to 28% of the land.
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