The High Conservation Values

The six types of High Conservation Value areas

High Conservation Value areas are critical areas in a landscape which need to be appropriately managed in order to maintain or enhance High Conservation Values. There are six main types of HCV areas, based on the definition originally developed by the Forest Stewardship Council for certification of forest ecosystems, but now increasingly expanded to apply to assessments of other ecosystems. The six types of HCV areas are listed below, with an example for each. You can click on each HCV to see the extended definition which has been developed specifically for the High Conservation Value Forests (HCVF) Global Toolkit:

	HCV1. Areas containing globally, regionally or nationally significant concentrations of biodiversity values (e.g. endemism, endangered species, refugia). For example, the presence of several globally threatened bird species within a Kenyan montane forest.
	HCV2. Globally, regionally or nationally significant large landscape-level areas where viable populations of most if not all naturally occurring species exist in natural patterns of distribution and abundance. For example, a large tract of Mesoamerican flooded grasslands and gallery forests with healthy populations of Hyacinth Macaw, Jaguar, Maned Wolf, and Giant Otter, as well as most smaller species.
	HCV3. Areas that are in or contain rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems. For example, patches of a regionally rare type of freshwater swamp in an Australian coastal district.
	HCV4. Areas that provide basic ecosystem services in critical situations (e.g. watershed protection, erosion control). For example, forest on steep slopes with avalanche risk above a town in the European Alps.
	HCV5. Areas fundamental to meeting basic needs of local communities (e.g. subsistence, health). For example, key hunting or foraging areas for communities living at subsistence level in a Cambodian lowland forest mosaic.
	HCV6. Areas critical to local communities’ traditional cultural identity (areas of cultural, ecological, economic or religious significance identified in cooperation with such local communities). For example, sacred burial grounds within a forest management area in Canada.

In summary, a High Conservation Value area is the area of natural habitat required to maintain or enhance a High Conservation Value. A HCV area may be part of a larger habitat, for example a riparian zone protecting a stream that is the sole supply of drinking water to a community or a patch of a rare limestone-loving forest within a larger forest area. Elsewhere, the HCV area may be the whole of a habitat, for example a large forest management unit, when that forest contains several threatened or endangered species that range throughout the forest. Any habitat type – boreal, temperate or tropical, natural or modified by humans, can potentially be designated an HCV area, because HCV designation relies solely on the presence of High Conservation Values within the habitat.