Rationale

A comprehensive conservation vision is the definition of conservation sucess. This vision defines:"how much is enough?" A vision based on targets/elements depends on explicit goals for the number and distribution of viable, secure occurrences of them necessary to ensure their long-term persistence in the ecoregion, and fulfill the ecoregion's contribution to ensure target/element persistence across their full ranges. Goals should be sufficient to allow the target/element to maintain ecological variability, evolve, and persist within the ecoregion as conditions change over the coming decades. These goals are the gage which we use to measure conservation status measures.

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• Minimum numerical abundance (number, percent or area) and distribution goals (spatial/ecological stratification) and justifications for these goals for every target/group of targets within the ecoregion.
• If appropriate, alternative goals, as expressions of relative risk, to form the basis for creating multiple regional conservation scenarios.
• For relatively intact ecoregions, multiple goal levels may be effectively combined with forecasts of future land/water uses to identify types, levels and locations of acceptable impacts and those that need to be addressed through priority conservation actions.