Environmental conflicts and nature reserves: redesigning Sierra San Pedro Mártir National Park, Mexico Original Research Article

Nature reserves can be considered a land-use category that competes with other land-uses for territory. Therefore, one fundamental goal in conservation planning is to arrive at nature reserve designs that protect the most valuable lands for conservation, and avoid the inclusion of tracts of land valuable for other stakeholders. However, the complexity of conservation issues, the urgency for protecting critical biodiversity components and the lack of data have forced planners to rely on expert knowledge and public participation for designing nature reserves. Handling expert and public knowledge is challenging because it can be subjective, biased, value laden, context specific, and ambiguous. Here, we present a land suitability assessment (LSA) approach for designing the Sierra San Pedro Mártir National Park, Baja California, Mexico. The LSA allowed us the optimal configuration SSPM in terms of delimitation (inclusion of the most valuable biological resources) and zoning (segregation of incompatible land-uses).