Similarities in stakeholder identification of restoration targets in a semiarid area

Ecological restoration is a suitable tool to revert the decline in the provision of ecosystem services in semiarid areas. Stakeholder opinion has been increasingly incorporated in ecological restoration strategies. However, the debate still exists whether the opinion of scientists and managers should be integrated together with that of local stakeholders in the decision making process. We assessed the restoration priorities in a semiarid area in North Morocco according to the opinion of 67 stakeholders, including scientists and managers, direct users and collaborators. The questions consisted in (i) ranking five categories of services in addition to economic benefits, and in (ii) comparing pairs of services within each category. We checked for both cardinal and ordinal inconsistency. The results showed an overall consensus about regulating and supporting services as the most valuable categories. More specifically, the most important services were erosion and flood control, soil fertility, water supply and species richness. The accuracy of the responses of the three groups was similar as the consistency for their judgments was not significantly different. Our results bring additional proof that the opinion of scientists, managers and local stakeholders should be considered of similar interest and accuracy when defining the most suitable restoration objectives.The research was carried out in the University of Abdelmalek Essaadi (Tétouan, Morocco) and the University of Alicante (Spain) and was funded by the projects SEMER (AECID: Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo, Programa de Cooperación Interuniversitaria AECI-PCI AP/040315/11), RESEP2B (University of Alicante) and UNCROACH (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; CGL2011-30581-C02-01), in collaboration with the Forest Administration of Al Hoceima in N Morocco