Priority species and sites for plant conservation in the Mediterranean Alps: an example of a cross-border approach

Conservation challenges are particularly important within regional hotspots of biodiversity. This is the case of the south-western Alps (France – Italy) situated at the interface of the Alpine and Mediterranean ecoregions. A key objective here is to perform practical and biogeographical analyses in order to create a hierarchy of species in terms of their conservation importance, and thus the identification of small but key areas to prevent biodiversity loss. First, we made the rank of 914 species with criteria related to rarity and vulnerability using a standardized repeatable method to define and prioritize conservation actions. Second, we analyzed the spatial patterns of species richness for endemic, threatened, and high conservation priority species. in the dataset. Third, we investigated whether current protected areas include a sufficient proportion of these indicators of species.