Biodiversity hotspot
A Biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic region that is both a significant reservoir of biodiversity and is threatened with destruction. The Biodiversity hotspots were identified by Conservation International (CI), and identify the 25 biologically rich areas around the world that are the focus of Conservation International's conservation activities. According to CI, the remaining natural habitat in these biodiversity hotspots amounts to just 1.4 percent of the land surface of the planet, yet supports nearly 60 percent of the world's plant, bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species.
The biodiversity hotspots initiative is similar to World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Global 200 initiative, which identifies over 200 ecoregions as priorities for conservation of biodiversity. Both are science-based initiatives that try to quantify species diversity, and the WWF and CI schemes both target many of the same regions. The main differences are in the scale of the regions?the biodiversity hotspots tend to be larger regions, and generally include multiple WWF ecoregions?and CI's focus on terrestrial ecoregions, while the WWF scheme includes freshwater and marine ecoregions as well.
The 25 Biodiversity Hotspots
