Incorporating reef condition into conservation planning to meet place-based biodiversity outcomes under the Global Biodiversity Framework

To achieve Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) Target 3, the selection of protected areas must consider the condition of ecosystems at sites in addition to the GBF 30% area target. Implementing this consideration for coral reef ecosystems is challenging because data describing condition are patchy and limited. Thus, there is uncertainty in how effective coral reef condition data are for informing conservation priorities. To address this uncertainty, we evaluated whether including ecosystem condition data changed conservation priorities when the objective was to protect reefs and implement Target 3. We tested multiple static and modeled temporal coral reef condition datasets for the Great Barrier Reef and found that including reef condition significantly altered spatial planning priorities (p < 0.001), with effects varying according to the condition indicator used. Almost half of the reefs prioritized for protection when condition metrics were included became low priority when they were excluded. Ignoring information about condition missed conservation targets for ∼22% of reef habitats once condition measures were included, highlighting how presence-only approaches can overestimate conservation benefits by treating lower-condition reefs as equal contributors to biodiversity protection. These differences in priority areas highlight the need to develop and use effective condition metrics for designing marine protected area systems for coral reefs globally. Making such data available and usable for managers and practitioners is a priority for coral reef conservation.