Réseau des Milieux Naturels Protégés : link occurrence data to protected areas

Wednesday, 5 July 2017

The Réseau des Milieux Naturels Protégés (RMN) is an organization in Québec promoting the protection and conservation of private natural areas, as well as the sensibilisation of citizens and landowners to the importance of the conservation of this natural areas for biodiversity in Québec.
This network includes organizations and individuals across Québec and inventories more than 800 sites in the province, totalling more than 50 000 ha. These sites are all listed in the
Répertoire des milieux naturels protégés du Québec, developed by the RMN.

At the start of 2017, the RMN and Canadensys have started a collaboration in order to link the natural areas inventoried by the RMN, based on the coordinates of the sites, and the occurrence data published by Canadensys. A ‘Faune et Flore’ tab allows users to get information about taxa collected or observed in the site of interest (example for the Réserve naturelle Gault, at Mont-Saint-Hilaire).

This information can be useful for preliminary evaluation of an area, or just to check the presence of a particular taxon, even if it is not exhaustive (data published are, for the majority, not inventories, and taxonomic groups represented are dependant of the collection or datasets published on Canadensys), or non-existant for several sites.

In order to increase taxonomic representativeness at each site, the RMN invites its members to publish their datasets on Canadensys through a note on the ‘Faune et Flore’ tab, as well as through a webinar presented on March 29, 2017. The recording and presentation of this webinar are available on the RMN website (French only).

The collaboration continues between the RMN and Canadensys, through a preliminary project in partnership with the QCBS, the CDPNQ, the University of Montréal, the university Laval and McGill University. This project aims to better understand and evaluate the impact of voluntary conservation projects on floristic biodiversity in the south of Québec. We hope this project will lead to further partnerships and projects.