East Maui, Hawaiʻi example solution demonstrating optimization of climate resilient habitat for native plant species recovery, 2021

Multi-species recovery planning can be a challenging natural resource management task. In collaboration with state and federal agencies, and botanical and technical experts, we developed and tested a multi-step optimization process to assist in identifying the minimum climate resilient habitat for the recovery of multiple threatened, endangered, and at-risk plant species across east Maui, Hawaiʻi. Data include the underlying land-use configuration file, predictive climate models, list of plant species and number of populations to recover/protect, habitat and forest bird distribution information, presence of fencing, land management status, and naming protocol file.
We identified a suite of potential conservation footprints that are constrained by ecological and resource management selection criteria based input and co-production with botanical experts and resource managers. We present an example solution that includes sufficient recovery habitat for all species of interest and identify priority recovery planning units for population-level recovery planning. The dataset is presented at the planning unit level and indicates which species can be recovered within a given unit.