Reviews 
Putting Biodiversity On The Map: Priority Areas for Global 
Conservation (1992). By CJ Bibby, NJ Collar, MJ Crosby, MF 
Heath, Ch Imboden, TH Johnson, AJ Long, AJ Stattersf ield 
and SJ Thirgood. 90 pages . Available from BirdLife 
International. £12.50. 
This latest ICBP publication could hardly be more timely. At an abstract level, the 
last year has seen much wider acceptance of the need to conserve biodiversity, 
but in practice it is not at all clear that the fine words spoken by world leaders at 
the Earth Summit in Rio are having much impact. 
The simplest response for conservationists is to take the moral high ground and 
point out that politicians, fixated with the short-term, are not prepared to put 
current material gain at risk for some Brundtland-esque vision of the future. But 
arguably conservationists have not been very skilled in promoting their own 
cause. Even the most committed of us would acknowledge that conservation is 
a tricky business, yet we do a lot less than we could to help decision makers 
through the maze. 
Reports such as this are beginning to provide the type of information that is 
essential if we are to have any chance of slowing down the rate of species loss. On 
the basis that, at a global level, we neither wish nor are able to stop development 
(including land-use change), one of the key tasks is to steer it away from 
important conservation areas. By mapping concentrations of endemic bird 
species and showing that a great variety of unique wildlife inhabits a very small 
part of the world, the authors have made a very valuable addition to the guidance 
available. 
The key facts bear repeating. Some 20% of all bird species are confined to just 2% 
of the Earth's land surface. The same places also accommodate 70% of the world's 
threatened birds and are of great importance for mammals, reptiles, amphibians, 
plants, molluscs and insects. Protection of these most critical areas for biodiversity 
would ensure the survival of a disproportionately wide variety of birds and other 
Most restricted range birds are forest species and most of the 221 Endemic Bird 
Areas (EBAs) are tropical forest areas. There are equal numbers of island and 
continental EBAs, the former being generally smaller than the la tter. The criterion 
used to define a restricted range species is one with a range of less than 50,000 
km 2 , although more than half of all EBAs are smaller than 20,000 km 2 . With 63%. 
of these located in just 10 countries, headed by Indonesia, the poli ticnl implications 
of this work are substantial. 
life. 
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