2 What the toolkit offers
The toolkit comprises three main components that:
help users identify critical sites for species, including supporting users to turn complex animal tracking data into outputs useful for decision-makers. The toolkit also helps guide users to generate the data they need for an effective Key Biodiversity Area proposal.
help users to identify threats that may impact species at sites and then identify effective conservation interventions which could be applied at sites.
help users understand which mechanisms can support decision-makers to act, by guiding users through the policy and advocacy opportunties for site-based conservation.
Ultimately, the toolkit provides the foundations to recognise important sites for marine megafauna; helping us to prioritise and conserve critical sites for the persistence of biodiversity from individual sites, to national, regional and global networks.
2.1 Key Biodiversity Areas
This toolkit ultimately aims to support users achieve species being in a favourable conservation status.
The toolkit is biased to site-based conservation measures which support species achieving a favrouable conservation status through the conservation and management of globally important sites for biodiversity, Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), given the strong links KBAs have to global and national policy mechanisms. However, many of the processes and tools outlined in the toolkit will be relevant to the conservation and management of sites which do not meet the criteria to be a considered a Key Biodiversity Area but, nevertheless, may warrant conservation and management measures at differing scales.
