The conflict between agricultural expansion and priority conservation areas: Making the right decisions before it is too late

Agricultural expansion generates problems to ecosystems and hinders conservation efforts. Although several researchers worldwide are working to develop efficient approaches for conserving biodiversity adequately, certain decisions should be taken urgently. Here, by using two entire classes of vertebrates (amphibians and reptiles), we calculated optimal conservation area networks (CANs) under nine different scenarios (including three different degrees of land-use and three different degrees of ambition in conservation objectives), in a highly deforested province of central Argentina. We show that if conservation decisions are delayed further, not only will more land be necessary to meet a given conservation objective, but also that optimal CANs will have to have a much greater perimeter, a larger number of fragments and a less appropriate shape. Therefore, as agricultural frontiers continue to advance without designating specific sites for conservation, we are losing the possibility to conserve biodiversity adequately.