From jniles@leland.Stanford.EDU Wed Jan 7 19:22:56 1998 Received: from mx4.u.washington.edu (mx4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.5]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW97.05) with ESMTP id TAA44482 for ; Wed, 7 Jan 1998 19:22:55 -0800 Received: from elaine25.Stanford.EDU (elaine25.Stanford.EDU [171.64.15.100]) by mx4.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW97.09) with ESMTP id TAA27079 for ; Wed, 7 Jan 1998 19:22:54 -0800 Received: (from jniles@localhost) by elaine25.Stanford.EDU (8.8.8/8.8.4) id TAA20521; Wed, 7 Jan 1998 19:22:04 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 19:22:04 -0800 (PST) From: John-O Niles Sender: jniles@leland.Stanford.EDU Reply-To: John-O Niles To: consbio@u.washington.edu Subject: Tropical habitat protection In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19971205233057.1087e166@pop.igc.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hello folks, I would be interested in hearing from conservation biologist what they think is an appropriate way to begin "ranking--prioritizing--ordering" conservation needs in the tropics. With current deforestation trends and with limited global resources, where should we be spending money from Rio, from GEF, from NGOs? Does any one know a paper that has tried to rank countries for their habitat? Any one know of a habitat protection optimization plan? I am working on a deision matrix for foreign aid agencies (World Bank, ODA, GEF, USAID). The thrust of this matrix is to recomend where these agencies can most efficiently invest to maximize habitat protection in the tropics. This list will be based on the weighted "value of countries' forest". For example, a country with forests that support higher levels of diversity and those with a higher carbon sequestration potential will score higher. Also, the list will preferentially rank countries which have higher levels of success in "development" projects. Additionally, a population density rnaking weill also be incorporated and ranked appropriatly - given that several studies have shown pop denisty to be the mot negativly correlated factor for forest cover. ********************************************************* SPECIFIC HELP REQUEST ********************************************************* I was wondering if anyone knew more detailed databases which address: biodiversity, endemism, endangered species, Carbon sequestration/storage potentials. Additionally, I am curous to hear if the conservation biologist community has other considerations for this type of policy work. Thanks for your attention. John-O Niles -------------------------------- John-O Niles, graduate student Center for Conservation Biology Department of Biological Sciences Stanford University Stanford, California 94305-5020 fax: 650-723-5920 .