Strengthening protected areas for giant panda habitat and ecosystem services

Biodiversity and ecosystem services are two main focuses in conservation planning. Considering both biodiversity and ecosystem services is beneficial when designing protected area networks. We demonstrated the relationship between these two concepts using the giant panda in China as a case study. We assessed the spatial relationship between giant panda habitat suitability and three key ecosystem services including carbon sequestration, water retention, and soil retention. We conducted spatial correlation and then used MARXAN to propose areas to target for new protected areas in the future that consider both goals. Results showed that the habitat suitability was positively correlated with ecosystem services in the entire study area. Panda habitats covered 77.7%, 72.0%, and 66.6% of carbon sequestration, water retention, and soil retention supplies, respectively. However, in nature reserves, which encompassed 31.0% of the whole study area and contained 33.6% of panda habitat, there was only 26.1–29.7% coverage of all ecosystem services. This result implied that nature reserves represented panda habitats well but did not adequately represent the three key ecosystem services. We identified conservation priority areas combining both panda habitat and ecosystem services and then proposed new protected areas. Our results inform conservation policies such as giant panda national park planning in this region. Our study also has implications for the role of protected area systems in the conservation of both flagship species and key ecosystem services in other places.