In accordance with the PAPF planning methodology
adopted for this planning process, the Nature Conservancy’s
Conservation Action Planning (CAP) methodology has been used to
help identify the Ecological Management Programme’s
management objectives and actions. The CAP methodology provides a
mechanism for focusing ecological management by enabling the
identification and development of an accurate definition and
understanding of the area’s most significant ecological
features, and the major threats to these features. This methodology
has been now been applied in many conservation areas around the
world, and it is based on the premise that, with limited human and
financial resources available to managers, it is impractical to
attempt to manage and monitor every single aspect of the complex
ecology of an area, and management effort is therefore best focused
on a limited number of the area’s most important
features.
The CAP methodology involved the initial
identification of a limited number of “conservation
targets”, which represent and encapsulate the unique
biodiversity contained within the MMNR, or the ecological features
that require specific management actions (such as particularly
endangered species or habitats). The definition and understanding
of each of these targets was further elaborated through the
subsequent identification of the “key ecological
attributes” (KEAs), upon which the long-term survival of
each conservation target depends. This laid the foundations for the
identification of the “threats” to these targets
and attributes, and the subsequent prioritisation of these threats
according to their significance.
The nine MMNR conservation targets, important
subsidiary targets (i.e. other ecosystem components that share KEAs
and threats with the conservation target concerned), and the KEAs
for each target are set out below, with the the priority threats to
the MMNR conservation targets and their KEAs.
