Freshwater fisheries conservation can increase biodiversity

importance of those same spillovers, as is the case of local no-take areas. (see [33] for a related discussion on the impacts of Marine Protected Areas). We used the available information on the extent of spillovers from previous conservation projects [20] to exclude from the control group those areas that could be indirectly impacted by villages participating in ComFishIII, by imposing a minimum distance of 20km between treated and control villages. This distance is approximately the double of previous estimates of the extent of spillover effects in this region [20]. Step 4: Final list of control villages. Based on the response and detail of the feedback from the Provincial Offices, a final list was constructed that is limited to two provinces (Bolikham- xay and Khammouane). We excluded Savannakhet because the response from PAFO was insufficient to proceed. We excluded Champasack because all treatment and control villages would be situated in the mainstream Mekong and, given the importance of migratory fish, we would not be able to minimise the importance of spillovers across villages. We also excluded those villages where the program was based on reservoirs. Finally, logistical difficulties (namely, impossible access at the time of the survey) limited the village list to 32 villages (from the original 36 identified in the previous steps), of which half are in ComFishIII (see Fig 1). Data on biodiversity Local fishers (usually, the members of village fisheries committee) were presented with a list of

139 species likely to be found in the surveyed areas—see S1 Appendix—and asked to identify which species were caught in the previous 12 months. Interviews were conducted between February and March 2018, more than three years after the establishment of the last FCZ. To facilitate identification, each species was described by a photograph of a typical speci- men and its common Lao name. Interviewers, all junior staff from the Fisheries Department at the National University of Laos, were also instructed to provide additional assistance in case of Fig 1. Location of treated (ComFishIII) and control villages. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233775.g001 PLOS ONE FCZ and biodiversity PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233775 May 27, 2020 6 / 14