Prioritizing Conservation Criteria in Khojeer National Park Through the AHP Method

Nowadays a basis for designing national parks in Iran is based on the principle of conservation, and the user selection criteria for conservation are not properly prioritized or utilized. This issue poses a serious threat to the unity and integrity of the ecosystem. Moreover, the assessment criteria for conservation areas have also been designed solely in terms of susceptibility zoning standards, especially in coastal and marine areas. It is therefore necessary to set specific criteria for conservation areas, especially in national parks. This study is the first attempt to select quantitative and qualitative criteria for the various usages of and also determined by the priority of four capabilities of national parks. To this end, after analyzing conservation criteria using the Delphi method, the related criteria are ranked according to importance and the related criteria are selected. At the questionnaire stage, a number of criteria for each user are removed because experts believe they are less important than the others. Then by applying the AHP (Analytical hierarchy process) method using Expert choice software we compared a paired comparison between user conservation criteria whose percentage and degree of importance are greater than second rate of what is expected. In order to determine the importance factor and users’ acceptance based on coefficients obtained, the acceptable criteria are prioritized. Finally, those that have obtained an acceptable level of conservation result in criteria for threatened species that have the highest rank of preference. These are recommended according to the proposed priority in the line with integrated management in Khojeer Park.