The forests of Central Africa contain some of Earth's few remaining intact forests. These forests are increasingly threatened by infrastructure development, agriculture, and unsustainable extraction of natural resources (e.g., minerals, bushmeat, and timber), all of which is leading to deforestation and forest degradation, particularly defaunation, and hence causing declines in biodiversity and a significant increase in carbon emissions. Given the pervasive nature of these threats, the global importance of Central African forests for biodiversity conservation, and the limited resources for conservation and sustainable management, there is a need to identify where the most important areas are to orientate conservation efforts. We developed a novel approach for identifying spatial priorities where conservation efforts can maximize biodiversity benefits within Central Africa's most intact forest areas. We found that the Democratic Republic of Congo has the largest amount of priority areas in the region, containing more than half, followed by Gabon, the Republic of Congo and Cameroon. We compared our approach to one that solely prioritizes forest intactness and one that aims to achieve only biodiversity representation objectives. We found that when priorities are only based on forest intactness (without considering biodiversity representation), there are significantly fewer biodiversity benefits and vice versa. We therefore recommend multi-objective planning that includes biodiversity representation and forest intactness to ensure that both objectives are maximized. These results can inform various types of conservation strategies needed within the region, including land-use planning, jurisdictional REDD+ initiatives, and performance related carbon payments, protected area expansion, community forest management, and forest concession plans.

中文翻译：

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保护中部非洲最完整的生物多样性森林的空间优先事项

中非的森林包含地球上为数不多的完好无损的森林。这些森林日益受到基础设施发展、农业和自然资源（例如矿物、丛林肉和木材）的不可持续开采的威胁，所有这些都导致森林砍伐和森林退化，特别是动物区系丧失，从而导致生物多样性下降和碳排放量显着增加。鉴于这些威胁的普遍性、中部非洲森林对生物多样性保护的全球重要性以及用于保护和可持续管理的资源有限，有必要确定最重要的领域是保护工作的方向。我们开发了一种新的方法来确定空间优先级，保护工作可以在中非最完整的森林区域内最大限度地提高生物多样性。我们发现刚果民主共和国在该地区的优先地区数量最多，占一半以上，其次是加蓬、刚果共和国和喀麦隆。我们将我们的方法与仅优先考虑森林完整性的方法和旨在仅实现生物多样性代表目标的方法进行了比较。我们发现，当优先事项仅基于森林完整性（不考虑生物多样性的代表性）时，生物多样性的好处就会显着减少，反之亦然。因此，我们建议进行多目标规划，包括生物多样性代表性和森林完整性，以确保实现这两个目标。