Issues arising in KBA delineation 1) How do we delineate KBAs in a vast area of contiguous habitat when the area teems with threatened and irreplaceable species, each with different but overlapping ranges (like a wilderness within a hotspot)? Example: Over 2m ha of contiguous forest in southwest Cambodia. Over 60 GT and RR species known to occur there. Their distributions are well understood, and they occur from the mountains to the coast with overlapping ranges. How many KBAs do we delineate? CEPF identified twelve.

Issues arising in KBA delineation (cont.) 2) When should KBAs be split according to management units? Example: In IndoBurma, many KBAs were delineated based on protected area borders, IBA boundaries, provincial and district boundaries, logging concessions, etc. Should we really introduce elements of PA planning and future land use activities into KBA definition? If some of our core indicators are (a) PA coverage of KBAs and (b) habitat cover within KBAs, shouldn’t KBA delineation define all biologically important areas and thereby provide an argument for alternative management (PA expansion, buffer zones, community forests, etc), rather than just copying existing park boundaries for ease of management?

Issues arising in KBA delineation (cont.) 3) What constitutes a landscape species? Prior to KBA delineation, we need to systematically identify the area-demanding threatened species and decide what to do with them. Wide-ranging species (e.g. large ungulates, large predators, birds with large ranges, and some surprising species such as widespread, low-density tortoises) caused problems in the IndoBurma delineation process and a recent gap analysis.

Issues arising in KBA delineation 4) If a group of KBAs are adjacent to each other, and some contain the same globally threatened or irreplaceable species, how do we combine that species’ populations from each KBA for prioritization purposes? Example: In Cambodia, an area of contiguous habitat was split into multiple KBAs, meaning that single large populations of some species were divided into different KBAs on paper, with each KBA containing a segment that was globally insignificant (<1%) when in fact the combined population was of high conservation importance. Could this impact the KBA prioritization process, and how do we control for this during delineation?