for south-eastern Mexico. Conservation areas prioritized for amphibians could focus efforts in conducting expeditions searching for new amphibian species. It is also important to determine the status of amphibian populations in these areas, and their genetic variability in determining vulnerability to extinction by anthropogenic factors. Recently we proposed a triage tool to prioritize sites for conservation based on micro-endemic Mexican amphibian (Ochoa-Ochoa et al., submitted). This tool is base on the ground reality of limited resources and high speed of land use change, assessing current potential threat abatement responses derived from existing policy instruments and social initiatives. To prioritize the amphibian micro-endemic areas we used existing and newly compiled spatial databases of territorial conservation instruments, threats, and amphibian range distributions for Mexico. We identified 50% of Mexican micro-endemic amphibians as requiring urgent actions. We developed a conservation strategy for the majority of these species. However, almost 25% urgently need field-base verification to confirm their persistence due to the small percentage of remnant natural vegetation within their areas of distribution. Prioritization exercises as presented in this paper can help local experts make good policy decisions. Nevertheless, multicriteria analyses including socioeconomic variables are needed to refine conservation area networks and ensure that the final proposal satisfies divergent socioeconomic criteria and to identify natural hazards, vulnerability, and conservation goals of stakeholders involving different institutions and individuals. An efficient solution for a particular conservation problem can be performed only if it is supported by local communities who could potentially be affected by conservation actions implemented to achieve the goals. Literature Cited CONABIO – CONANP – TNC – PRONATURA – FCF & UANL (2007) Análisis de vacíos y omisiones en conservación de la biodiversidad terrestre de México: espacios y especies. Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad, Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas, The Nature ConservancyPrograma México, Pronatura, A.C., Facultad de Ciencias Forestales, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, México. CONABIO, CONANP (coord.). (2011) Planeación para la conservación de la biodiversidad terrestre en México: retos en un país megadiverso. Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la
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Biodiversidad, Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas, México. Flores-Villela, O.A. (1993) Herpetofauna of México: Distribution and Endemism. pp 253-281. In: Rammamoorthy TP, Bye R, Lot A. & Fa J. (Eds.) Biological diversity of Mexico: origins and distribution. Oxford University Press, New York. Flores-Villela, O.A. & Canseco-Márquez. L. (2004) Nuevas especies y cambios taxonómicos para la herpetofauna de México. Acta Zoológica Mexicana 20: 115-144. Frías-Alvarez, P., Zúñiga-Vega, J., Flores-Villela, O. (2010) A general assessment of the conservation status and decline trends of Mexican amphibians. Biodiversity & Conservation 19: 3699-3742. Mittermeier, R.A, Myers, N., Mittermeier, C.G. & Robles-Gil, P. (Eds). (1999) Hotspots - Earth’s biologically richest and most endangered terrestrial ecoregions. CEMEX/ Conservation International. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Ochoa-Ochoa, L.M. & Flores-Villela, O. (2006) Áreas de diversidad y endemismo de la herpetofauna mexicana. UNAM-CONABIO, México. 211pp. Ochoa-Ochoa, L.M., Urbina-Cardona, J.N., FloresVillela, O., Vázquez, L-B & Bezaury-Creel, J. (2009) The role of land protection through governmental protected areas and social action in biodiversity conservation: the case of Mexican amphibians. PlosOne: 4(9): e6878 Ochoa-Ochoa, L.M., Bezaury-Creel, J., Vázquez, L-B., & Flores-Villela, O. Choosing the survivors? A GIS-based triage support tool for micro-endemics: application to data for Mexican amphibians. Submitted to Biological Conservation. Rovito, S.M., Parra-Olea, G., Vásquez-Almazán, R.A., Papenfuss, T.J. & Wake, D.B. (2009) Dramatic declines in neotropical salamander populations are an important part of the global amphibian crisis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Early Edition: 2-6. Urbina-Cardona, J.N., & Flores-Villela, O. (2010). Ecological-niche modeling and prioritization of conservation-area networks for Mexican herpetofauna. Conservation Biology 24: 1031-1041. Urbina-Cardona, J.N. & Loyola, R.D. (2008) Applying niche-based models to predict endangeredhylid potential distributions: are neotropical protected areas effective enough? Tropical Conservation Science 1: 417–445.