Efficiency of species survey networks can be improved by integrating different monitoring approaches in a spatial prioritization design

Public participation to monitoring programs is increasingly advocated to overcome scarcity of resources and deliver important information for policy-making. Here, we illustrate the design of optimal monitoring networks for bird species of conservation concern in Catalonia (NE Spain), under different scenarios of combined governmental and citizen-science monitoring approaches. In our case study, current government efforts, limited to protected areas, were insufficient to cover the whole spectrum of target species and species-threat levels, reinforcing the assumption that citizen-science data can greatly assist in achieving monitoring targets. However, simply carrying out both government and citizen-science monitoring ad hoc led to inefficiency and duplication of efforts: some species were represented in excess of targets while several features were undersampled. Policy-making should concentrate on providing an adequate platform for coordination of government and public-participatory monitoring to minimize duplicated efforts, overcome the biases of each monitoring program and obtain the best from both.