Ecologia

Landscape and Urban Planning 91 (2009) 183–194

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Landscape and Urban Planning
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landurbplan

Integrating conservation planning and landuse planning in urban landscapes
Ascelin Gordon a,∗ , David Simondson a , Matt White b , Atte Moilanen c , Sarah Adine Bekessy a
a

School of Global Studies, Social Science andPlanning, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001, Australia The Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Department of Sustainability and Environment, PO Box 137, Heidelberg 3084, Australia c Metapopulation Research Group, Department Biological and Environmental Sciences, PO Box 65 (Biocenter III), University of Helsinki, Finland
b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
The rapidgrowth of cities around the world is now seen as a major contributor to global biodiversity loss and many governments include biodiversity conservation as an explicit policy goal. To help prevent further loss of biodiversity, there is an urgent need for more strategic approaches to conservation planning in urban environments based on a scientific understanding of landscape patterns, speciesrequirements and development pressures. In this study, we demonstrate the use of new conservation planning tools to better integrate information on threatened species into landuse planning. We present a case study in the Greater Melbourne area that utilises the Zonation conservation planning tool with data for 30 threatened fauna species. We perform a multi-species spatial prioritisation that incorporatesspecies-specific connectivity requirements and demonstrate the use of this information in a number of landuse planning contexts. First, we quantitatively assess the differences between Melbourne’s current conservation areas with the locations prioritised by Zonation and determine priority areas for their extension. We then show how the prioritisation can be used in decisions regarding Melbourne’sUrban Growth Boundary and in rezoning land for development. Finally, we demonstrate how the prioritisation can be used to identify areas of conservation significance within individual developments that account for the wider landscape context. These results demonstrate how conservation planning tools can be better integrated into the different stages of landuse planning for future urban growth. ©2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 16 October 2007 Received in revised form 12 November 2008 Accepted 30 December 2008 Available online 23 February 2009 Keywords: Conservation planning Zonation Landscape prioritisation Connectivity Urban planning Threatened species

1. Introduction The global biodiversity crisis (Western, 1992) has come about due to major landusechanges resulting from human activities (Hilty et al., 2006). This is particularly prevalent in urban areas where high levels of fragmentation are common and the greater intensity of land modification in the matrix surrounding remaining habitat is generally unsuitable for many species. The expansion of urban areas is a major threat to the biodiversity values of peri-urban areas (Williams et al., 2001),and can lead to a simplification of indigenous biodiversity (Knight, 1999). Important values are at stake; for example, in Australia, it is estimated that more than 50% of threatened species have habitat in and around major cities or in population growth areas (Yencken and Wilkinson, 2000). Mitigating the impacts of the growth of cities on natural systems and processes is complicated by high landvalues, a diversity of stakeholders and land tenures (Bekessy and Gordon, 2007), and is hampered by a

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 3 9925 9930; fax: +61 3 9925 3088. E-mail addresses: ascelin.gordon@rmit.edu.au (A. Gordon), david.simondson@maroondah.vic.gov.au (D. Simondson), matt.white@dse.vic.gov.au (M. White), ajmoilan@mappi.helsinki.fi (A. Moilanen), sarah.bekessy@rmit.edu.au (S.A....