Biodiversity loss is accelerating globally, driven by habitat degradation, anthropogenic pressure, and climate stressors. Effective conservation requires spatially explicit tools capable of synthesizing multiple datasets - yet most existing approaches demand advanced programming skills or specialized software environments, limiting their uptake among practitioners and planners.

The Sequential Hierarchical Intersection Layers (SHIL) model addresses this gap directly. Developed entirely within QGIS, SHIL is a modular, step-by-step geospatial framework that intersects multiple ecological datasets across administrative or habitat-level boundaries, producing transparent, reproducible, and policy-ready prioritization maps.

Its outputs are fully compatible with any GIS environment and can be re-processed, aggregated, or refined at multiple administrative scales.