Social media records hold valuable information for conservation planning

Citizen science plays a crucial role in helping monitor biodiversity and inform conservation. With the widespread use of smartphones, many people share biodiversity information on social media, but this information is still not widely used in conservation. Here, focussing on Bangladesh - a tropical mega-diverse and mega-populated country, we examine the potential 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 centre parts of Bangladesh, extending priority conservation areas by 2000-5000 km2. Community efforts are needed to drive the implementation of the ambitious Post-2020 protected area targets, especially in…