Vulnerability of turtles to deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: Indicating priority areas for conservation

The loss of forest cover has been considered to be an important factor in the decline of turtle populations. We used Species Distribution Models (SDM) to identify the potential distribution areas of several turtle species in the Brazilian Amazon and to calculate amount of area possibly lost to deforestation (vulnerability). We then used the software Zonation to prioritize areas for turtle conservation. We assigned higher conservation weight to terrestrial, semi-aquatic and threatened turtles and forced the exclusion of deforested areas. Different scenarios were run to assess the effectiveness of PAs in protecting turtles. Priority areas for turtle conservation are located in central-northern Amazon. These regions usually do not encompass high deforestation areas. Areas that turtles are most vulnerable to deforestation are located in central-northeastern Amazon, but only three species lost more potential distribution area to current and predicted deforestation than the percentage of total deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Phrynops geoffroanus, Podocnemis unifilis, Mesoclemmys gibba and Kinosternon scorpioides had a highest proportion of their potential distribution area lost due to deforestation. Many priority sites for turtle conservation are located outside of PAs, even when considering only the top 17% of priority sites. Although we did not explicitly take into consideration the social importance of turtles as a food resource in our analysis, our results highlight the most important regions for investing in conservation of turtles in the Brazilian Amazon. These results have significant practical implications for conservation.