This project will consolidate a shift in the way that PAs in Uruguay are planned and managed, from their current situation that keeps them largely functionally isolated within a highly modified landscape to one in which they merge gradually, and are integrated into, the wider landscapes that surround them; and where the management of the PAs and that of the surrounding landscape is progressively harmonized. This is increasingly necessary as expansion of commercial monocultures and intensified production systems (in the agriculture, livestock and forestry sectors is making the landscapes surrounding PAs increasingly hostile to BD and accentuating their biological isolation, while at the same time increasing the threats posed to native species and ecosystems by invasive alien species (IAS). Phenomena associated with climate change are leading to increased threats to natural habitats from fire, and to modifications of the relative equilibrium between productive practices and biodiversity that characterize traditional production systems. The project will fill a programmatic gap and bridge the landscape-PA divide, thereby build upon and optimising other investments by GEF in the country, namely the GEF/UNDP project ‘Catalyzing the implementation of Uruguay's National Protected Area System' and the GEF/IBRD project ‘Rural Development and Biodiversity Management. It will take advantage of the opportunity presented by the country's new policies on spatial land use planning to harmonize, at central and site levels, policies related to environmental protection, so as to incorporate the landscape approach to management, strengthening the effectiveness of PAs as nuclei for the conservation of globally important species and ecosystems.