Using social media records to inform conservation planning

Abstract Citizen science plays a crucial role in helping monitor biodiversity and inform conservation. With the widespread use of smartphones, many people share posts that contain biodiversity information on social media, but this information is still not widely used in conservation. Focusing on Bangladesh, a tropical mega-diverse and mega-populated country, we examine the importance of social media records in conservation decision-making. We show that adding Facebook data to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) data improved the accuracy of conservation planning assessments by identifying additional important conservation areas in the northwest, southeast and central parts of Bangladesh, extending priority conservation areas by 4,000-10,000 km2. Community efforts are needed to drive the implementation of the ambitious Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets, especially in mega-diverse tropical countries with a lack of reliable and up-to-date species distribution data. We highlight that conservation planning can be enhanced by including available data gathered from social media platforms. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved