Testing the benefits of conservation set-asides for improved habitat connectivity in tropical agricultural landscapes

1. Habitat connectivity is important for tropical biodiversity conservation. Expansion of commodity crops, such as oil palm, fragments natural habitat areas, and strategies are needed to improve habitat connectivity in agricultural landscapes. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) voluntary certification system requires that growers identify and conserve forest patches identified as High Conservation Value Areas (HCVAs) before oil palm plantations can be certified as sustainable. We assessed the potential benefits of these conservation set-asides for forest connectivity. 2. We mapped HCVAs and quantified their forest cover in 2015. To assess their contribution to forest connectivity, we modelled range expansion of forest-dependent populations with five dispersal abilities spanning those representative of poor dispersers (e.g., flightless insects) to more mobile species (e.g., large birds or bats) across 70 plantation landscapes in Borneo. 3. Because only 21% o...1. 生境连通性（Habitat connectivity）对热带生物多样性保护至关重要。油棕（oil palm）等商品作物的扩张会导致自然生境破碎化，因此亟需制定策略以优化农业景观中的生境连通性。可持续棕榈油圆桌会议（Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil，RSPO）的自愿认证体系规定，种植户需先识别并保护被划定为高保护价值区域（High Conservation Value Areas，HCVAs）的森林斑块，其油棕种植园方可获得可持续认证。本研究评估了此类保护预留地对森林连通性的潜在增益效应。 2. 研究团队绘制了HCVAs的空间分布，并量化了其2015年的森林覆盖率。为评估HCVAs对森林连通性的贡献，本研究针对婆罗洲的70处种植园景观，构建了依赖森林的种群扩散范围扩张模型，涵盖了从扩散能力较弱的类群（如无翅昆虫）到活动能力更强的物种（如大型鸟类或蝙蝠）的5种扩散能力梯度。 3. 由于仅21%的……