Conservation prioritization of dry forest communities and species in Myanmar based on conservation preference and local use

Background/Question/Methods

Effective conservation planning requires to understand both ecological and socio political values. In Myanmar, dry forest community types and species that should be prioritized for conservation are not known yet due to limited research. My study is to develop a conservation prioritization procedure which supports both local people’s welfare and regional biodiversity conservation by the feasible effort of field survey. Vegetation survey in 1139 sample plots of 15m x 15m and questionnaire survey in 14 villages were carried out in 100km x 100km area in central dry zone. Woody vegetation was divided into 14 types. A decision procedure considering lower human impact, diverse plant functional type, extreme environment, and rarity is applied to identify prioritized communities. Prioritized species were chosen by community specificity and rarity. The respondents in questionnaire were 6 forest officers at management level, 9 forest rangers at operational level and 29 local people including old persons, traditional medical practitioners and monks. The respondents were asked whether 14 community types and 210 species listed in questionnaire are needed for conservation or not to evaluate our prioritization method. Another questionnaire was conducted for local people to understand the importance of those community types and species for their livelihood.

Results/Conclusions

330 species were recorded and 14 community types were classified. Among 14 community types, our prioritization method identified only 6 community types (Types 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) as prioritized ones for conservation which covers 5.03% of the total study area. Based on the community specificity and occurrence probability, 60 rare important species were identified as prioritized species for conservation. Our prioritization method for plant community types corresponds to the respondents’ judgment by forest officers (P=2.97E-07, chi-square test), forest rangers (P=3.89E-05) and local people (P=1.57E-14) respectively. Prioritized species significantly corresponded to judgments by forest officers (P= 0.027) and forest rangers (P= 0.028), but not in local people (P= 0.09). This may be due to our prioritization method that focuses on ecologically rare indicator species while local people want to conserve useful abundant species for their livelihood. While forest officers’ preference is related to species which have fuel value, local people prefer to conserve species considering various usages not only for fuel but also for food and aesthetics. All people (officers, local people, rangers, and scientists) should meet together to communicate their senses of values, and the concept “conservation” and “wild resource” should be shared by all people.