Understanding the effects of different social data on selecting priority conservation areas

Conservation success is contingent on assessing social and environmental factors so that cost‐effective implementation of strategies and actions can be placed in a broad social–ecological context. Until now, the focus has been on how to include spatially explicit social data in conservation planning, whereas the value of different kinds of social data has received limited attention. In a regional systematic conservation planning case study in Australia, we examined the spatial concurrence of a range of spatially explicit social values and land‐use preferences collected using a public participation geographic information system and biological data. We used Zonation to integrate the social data with the biological data in a series of spatial‐prioritization scenarios to determine the effect of the different types of social data on spatial prioritization compared with biological data alone. The type of social data (i.e., conservation opportunities or constraints) significantly affected spatial prioritization outcomes. The integration of social values and land‐use preferences under different scenarios was highly variable and generated spatial prioritizations 1.2–51% different from those based on biological data alone. The inclusion of conservation‐compatible values and preferences added relatively few new areas to conservation priorities, whereas including noncompatible economic values and development preferences as costs significantly changed conservation priority areas (48.2% and 47.4%, respectively). Based on our results, a multifaceted conservation prioritization approach that combines spatially explicit social data with biological data can help conservation planners identify the type of social data to collect for more effective and feasible conservation actions.     

Use of Inverse Spatial Conservation Prioritization to Avoid Biological Diversity Loss Outside Protected Areas

Globally expanding human land use sets constantly increasing pressure for maintenance of biological diversity and functioning ecosystems. To fight the decline of biological diversity, conservation science has broken ground with methods such as the operational model of systematic conservation planning (SCP), which focuses on design and on‐the‐ground implementation of conservation areas. The most commonly used method in SCP is reserve selection that focuses on the spatial design of reserve networks and their expansion. We expanded these methods by introducing another form of spatial allocation of conservation effort relevant for land‐use zoning at the landscape scale that avoids negative ecological effects of human land use outside protected areas. We call our method inverse spatial conservation prioritization. It can be used to identify areas suitable for economic development while simultaneously limiting total ecological and environmental effects of that development at the landscape level by identifying areas with highest economic but lowest ecological value. Our method is not based on a priori targets, and as such it is applicable to cases where the effects of land use on, for example, individual species or ecosystem types are relatively small and would not lead to violation of regional or national conservation targets. We applied our method to land‐use allocation to peat mining. Our method identified a combination of profitable production areas that provides the needed area for peat production while retaining most of the landscape‐level ecological value of the ecosystem. The results of this inverse spatial conservation prioritization are being used in land‐use zoning in the province of Central Finland.     

Using a social–ecological framework to inform the implementation of conservation plans

One of the key determinants of success in biodiversity conservation is how well conservation planning decisions account for the social system in which actions are to be implemented. Understanding elements of how the social and ecological systems interact can help identify opportunities for implementation. Utilizing data from a large‐scale conservation initiative in southwestern of Australia, we explored how a social–ecological system framework can be applied to identify how social and ecological factors interact to influence the opportunities for conservation. Using data from semistructured interviews, an online survey, and publicly available data, we developed a conceptual model of the social–ecological system associated with the conservation of the Fitz‐Stirling region. We used this model to identify the relevant variables (remnants of vegetation, stakeholder presence, collaboration between stakeholders, and their scale of management) that affect the implementation of conservation actions in the region. We combined measures for these variables to ascertain how areas associated with different levels of ecological importance coincided with areas associated with different levels of stakeholder presence, stakeholder collaboration, and scales of management. We identified areas that could benefit from different implementation strategies, from those suitable for immediate conservation action to areas requiring implementation over the long term to increase on‐the‐ground capacity and identify mechanisms to incentivize implementation. The application of a social–ecological framework can help conservation planners and practitioners facilitate the integration of ecological and social data to inform the translation of priorities for action into implementation strategies that account for the complexities of conservation problems in a focused way.     

Integrating Biological and Social Values When Prioritizing Places for Biodiversity Conservation

The consideration of information on social values in conjunction with biological data is critical for achieving both socially acceptable and scientifically defensible conservation planning outcomes. However, the influence of social values on spatial conservation priorities has received limited attention and is poorly understood. We present an approach that incorporates quantitative data on social values for conservation and social preferences for development into spatial conservation planning. We undertook a public participation GIS survey to spatially represent social values and development preferences and used species distribution models for 7 threatened fauna species to represent biological values. These spatially explicit data were simultaneously included in the conservation planning software Zonation to examine how conservation priorities changed with the inclusion of social data. Integrating spatially explicit information about social values and development preferences with biological data produced prioritizations that differed spatially from the solution based on only biological data. However, the integrated solutions protected a similar proportion of the species’ distributions, indicating that Zonation effectively combined the biological and social data to produce socially feasible conservation solutions of approximately equivalent biological value. We were able to identify areas of the landscape where synergies and conflicts between different value sets are likely to occur. Identification of these synergies and conflicts will allow decision makers to target communication strategies to specific areas and ensure effective community engagement and positive conservation outcomes. Integración de Valores Biológicos y Sociales al Priorizar Sitios para la Conservación de la Biodiversidad     

Mainstreaming the social sciences in conservation

Despite broad recognition of the value of social sciences and increasingly vocal calls for better engagement with the human element of conservation, the conservation social sciences remain misunderstood and underutilized in practice. The conservation social sciences can provide unique and important contributions to society's understanding of the relationships between humans and nature and to improving conservation practice and outcomes. There are 4 barriers—ideological, institutional, knowledge, and capacity—to meaningful integration of the social sciences into conservation. We provide practical guidance on overcoming these barriers to mainstream the social sciences in conservation science, practice, and policy. Broadly, we recommend fostering knowledge on the scope and contributions of the social sciences to conservation, including social scientists from the inception of interdisciplinary research projects, incorporating social science research and insights during all stages of conservation planning and implementation, building social science capacity at all scales in conservation organizations and agencies, and promoting engagement with the social sciences in and through global conservation policy‐influencing organizations. Conservation social scientists, too, need to be willing to engage with natural science knowledge and to communicate insights and recommendations clearly. We urge the conservation community to move beyond superficial engagement with the conservation social sciences. A more inclusive and integrative conservation science—one that includes the natural and social sciences—will enable more ecologically effective and socially just conservation. Better collaboration among social scientists, natural scientists, practitioners, and policy makers will facilitate a renewed and more robust conservation. Mainstreaming the conservation social sciences will facilitate the uptake of the full range of insights and contributions from these fields into conservation policy and practice.     

Mapping social–ecological vulnerability to inform local decision making

An overarching challenge of natural resource management and biodiversity conservation is that relationships between people and nature are difficult to integrate into tools that can effectively guide decision making. Social–ecological vulnerability offers a valuable framework for identifying and understanding important social–ecological linkages, and the implications of dependencies and other feedback loops in the system. Unfortunately, its implementation at local scales has hitherto been limited due at least in part to the lack of operational tools for spatial representation of social–ecological vulnerability. We developed a method to map social–ecological vulnerability based on information on human–nature dependencies and ecosystem services at local scales. We applied our method to the small‐scale fishery of Moorea, French Polynesia, by combining spatially explicit indicators of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of both the resource (i.e., vulnerability of reef fish assemblages to fishing) and resource users (i.e., vulnerability of fishing households to the loss of fishing opportunity). Our results revealed that both social and ecological vulnerabilities varied considerably through space and highlighted areas where sources of vulnerability were high for both social and ecological subsystems (i.e., social–ecological vulnerability hotspots) and thus of high priority for management intervention. Our approach can be used to inform decisions about where biodiversity conservation strategies are likely to be more effective and how social impacts from policy decisions can be minimized. It provides a new perspective on human–nature linkages that can help guide sustainability management at local scales; delivers insights distinct from those provided by emphasis on a single vulnerability component (e.g., exposure); and demonstrates the feasibility and value of operationalizing the social–ecological vulnerability framework for policy, planning, and participatory management decisions.     

Scale Mismatches,Conservation Planning,and the Value of Social‐Network Analyses

Many of the challenges conservation professionals face can be framed as scale mismatches. The problem of scale mismatch occurs when the planning for and implementation of conservation actions is at a scale that does not reflect the scale of the conservation problem. The challenges in conservation planning related to scale mismatch include ecosystem or ecological process transcendence of governance boundaries; limited availability of fine‐resolution data; lack of operational capacity for implementation; lack of understanding of social‐ecological system components; threats to ecological diversity that operate at diverse spatial and temporal scales; mismatch between funding and the long‐term nature of ecological processes; rate of action implementation that does not reflect the rate of change of the ecological system; lack of appropriate indicators for monitoring activities; and occurrence of ecological change at scales smaller or larger than the scale of implementation or monitoring. Not recognizing and accounting for these challenges when planning for conservation can result in actions that do not address the multiscale nature of conservation problems and that do not achieve conservation objectives. Social networks link organizations and individuals across space and time and determine the scale of conservation actions; thus, an understanding of the social networks associated with conservation planning will help determine the potential for implementing conservation actions at the required scales. Social‐network analyses can be used to explore whether these networks constrain or enable key social processes and how multiple scales of action are linked. Results of network analyses can be used to mitigate scale mismatches in assessing, planning, implementing, and monitoring conservation projects. Discordancia de Escalas, Planificación de la Conservación y el Valor del Análisis de Redes Sociales     

Restoration planning to guide Aichi targets in a megadiverse country

Ecological restoration has become an important strategy to conserve biodiversity and ecosystems services. To restore 15% of degraded ecosystems as stipulated by the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi target 15, we developed a prioritization framework to identify potential priority sites for restoration in Mexico, a megadiverse country. We used the most current biological and environmental data on Mexico to assess areas of biological importance and restoration feasibility at national scale and engaged stakeholders and experts throughout the process. We integrated 8 criteria into 2 components (i.e., biological importance and restoration feasibility) in a spatial multicriteria analysis and generated 11 scenarios to test the effect of assigning different component weights. The priority restoration sites were distributed across all terrestrial ecosystems of Mexico; 64.1% were in degraded natural vegetation and 6% were in protected areas. Our results provide a spatial guide to where restoration could enhance the persistence of species of conservation concern and vulnerable ecosystems while maximizing the likelihood of restoration success. Such spatial prioritization is a first step in informing policy makers and restoration planners where to focus local and large‐scale restoration efforts, which should additionally incorporate social and monetary cost–benefit considerations.     

Conservation Planning as a Transdisciplinary Process

Abstract: Despite substantial growth in the field of conservation planning, the speed and success with which conservation plans are converted into conservation action remains limited. This gap between science and action extends beyond conservation planning into many other applied sciences and has been linked to complexity of current societal problems, compartmentalization of knowledge and management sectors, and limited collaboration between scientists and decision makers. Transdisciplinary approaches have been proposed as a possible way to address these challenges and to bridge the gap between science and action. These approaches move beyond the bridging of disciplines to an approach in which science becomes a social process resolving problems through the participation and mutual learning of stakeholders. We explored the principles of transdisciplinarity, in light of our experiences as conservation‐planning researchers working in South Africa, to better understand what is required to make conservation planning transdisciplinary and therefore more effective. Using the transdisciplinary hierarchy of knowledge (empirical, pragmatic, normative, and purposive), we found that conservation planning has succeeded in integrating many empirical disciplines into the pragmatic stakeholder‐engaged process of strategy development and implementation. Nevertheless, challenges remain in engagement of the social sciences and in understanding the social context of implementation. Farther up this knowledge hierarchy, at the normative and purposive levels, we found that a lack of integrated land‐use planning and policies (normative) and the dominant effect of national values (purposive) that prioritize growth and development limit the effectiveness and relevance of conservation plans. The transdisciplinary hierarchy of knowledge highlighted that we need to move beyond bridging the empirical and pragmatic disciplines into the complex normative world of laws, policies, and planning and become engaged in the purposive processes of decision making, behavior change, and value transfer. Although there are indications of progress in this direction, working at the normative and purposive levels requires time, leadership, resources, skills that are absent in conservation training and practice, and new forms of recognition in systems of scientific reward and funding.     

A comparative approach to assess drivers of success in mammalian conservation recovery programs

The outcomes of species recovery programs have been mixed; high‐profile population recoveries contrast with species‐level extinctions. Each conservation intervention has its own challenges, but to inform more effective management it is imperative to assess whether correlates of wider recovery program success or failure can be identified. To contribute to evidence‐based improvement of future conservation strategies, we conducted a global quantitative analysis of 48 mammalian recovery programs. We reviewed available scientific literature and conducted semistructured interviews with conservation professionals involved in different recovery programs to investigate ecological, management, and political factors associated with population recoveries or declines. Identifying and removing threats was significantly associated with increasing population trend and decreasing conservation dependence, emphasizing that populations are likely to continue to be compromised in the absence of effective threat mitigation and supporting the need for threat monitoring and adaptive management in response to new and potential threats. Lack of habitat and small population size were cited as limiting factors in 56% and 42% of recovery programs, respectively, and both were statistically associated with increased longer term dependence on conservation intervention, demonstrating the importance of increasing population numbers quickly and restoring and protecting habitat. Poor stakeholder coordination and management were also regularly cited by respondents as key weaknesses in recovery programs, indicating the importance of effective leadership and shared goals and management plans. Project outcomes were not influenced by biological or ecological variables such as body mass or habitat, which suggests that these insights into correlates of conservation success and failure are likely to be generalizable across mammals.     

Use of Modified Threat Reduction Assessments to Estimate Success of Conservation Measures within and Adjacent to Kruger National Park,South Africa

Abstract: The importance of biodiversity as natural capital for economic development and sustaining human welfare is well documented. Nevertheless, resource degradation rates and persistent deterioration of human welfare in developing countries is increasingly worrisome. Developing effective monitoring and evaluation schemes and measuring biodiversity loss continue to pose unique challenges, particularly when there is a paucity of historical data. Threat reduction assessment (TRA) has been proposed as a method to measure conservation success and as a proxy measurement of conservation impact, monitoring threats to resources rather than changes to biological parameters themselves. This tool is considered a quick, practical alternative to more cost‐ and time‐intensive approaches, but has inherent weaknesses. I conducted TRAs to evaluate the effectiveness of Kruger National Park (KNP) and Limpopo Province, South Africa, in mitigating threats to biodiversity from 1994 to 2004 in 4 geographical areas. I calculated TRA index values in these TRAs by using the original scoring developed by Margoluis and Salafsky (2001) and a modified scoring system that assigned negative mitigation values to incorporate new or worsening threats. Threats were standardized to allow comparisons across the sites. Modified TRA index values were significantly lower than values derived from the original scoring exercise. Five of the 11 standardized threats were present in all 4 assessment areas, 2 were restricted to KNP, 2 to Limpopo Province, and 2 only to Malamulele municipality. These results indicate, first, the need to integrate negative mitigation values into TRA scoring. By including negative values, investigators will be afforded a more accurate picture of biodiversity threats and of temporal and spatial trends across sites. Where the original TRA scoring was used to measure conservation success, reevaluation of these cases with the modified scoring is recommended. Second, practitioners must carefully consider the need and consequences of generalizing threats into generic categories for comparative assessments. Finally, continued refinement of the methodology and its extension to facilitate the transfer of successful conservation strategies is needed.     

Conservation Development Practices,Extent, and Land‐Use Effects in the United States

Abstract: Conservation development projects combine real‐estate development with conservation of land and other natural resources. Thousands of such projects have been conducted in the United States and other countries through the involvement of private developers, landowners, land trusts, and government agencies. Previous research has demonstrated the potential value of conservation development for conserving species, ecological functions, and other resource values on private lands, especially when traditional sources of conservation funding are not available. Nevertheless, the aggregate extent and effects of conservation development were previously unknown. To address this gap, we estimated the extent and trends of conservation development in the United States and characterized its key attributes to understand its aggregate contribution to land‐conservation and growth‐management objectives. We interviewed representatives from land trusts, planning agencies, and development companies, searched the Internet for conservation development projects and programs, and compiled existing databases of conservation development projects. We collected data on 3884 projects encompassing 1.38 million ha. About 43% of the projects targeted the conservation of specific plant or animal species or ecological communities of conservation concern; 84% targeted the protection of native ecosystems representative of the project area; and 42% provided buffers to existing protected areas. The percentage of protected land in conservation development projects ranged from <40% to >99%, and the effects of these projects on natural resources differed widely. We estimate that conservation development projects have protected roughly 4 million ha of land in the United States and account for about 25% of private‐land conservation activity nationwide.     

Mapping Human and Social Dimensions of Conservation Opportunity for the Scheduling of Conservation Action on Private Land

Abstract Spatial prioritization techniques are applied in conservation‐planning initiatives to allocate conservation resources. Although typically they are based on ecological data (e.g., species, habitats, ecological processes), increasingly they also include nonecological data, mostly on the vulnerability of valued features and economic costs of implementation. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of conservation actions implemented through conservation‐planning initiatives is a function of the human and social dimensions of social‐ecological systems, such as stakeholders’ willingness and capacity to participate. We assessed human and social factors hypothesized to define opportunities for implementing effective conservation action by individual land managers (those responsible for making day‐to‐day decisions on land use) and mapped these to schedule implementation of a private land conservation program. We surveyed 48 land managers who owned 301 land parcels in the Makana Municipality of the Eastern Cape province in South Africa. Psychometric statistical and cluster analyses were applied to the interview data so as to map human and social factors of conservation opportunity across a landscape of regional conservation importance. Four groups of landowners were identified, in rank order, for a phased implementation process. Furthermore, using psychometric statistical techniques, we reduced the number of interview questions from 165 to 45, which is a preliminary step toward developing surrogates for human and social factors that can be developed rapidly and complemented with measures of conservation value, vulnerability, and economic cost to more‐effectively schedule conservation actions. This work provides conservation and land management professionals direction on where and how implementation of local‐scale conservation should be undertaken to ensure it is feasible.     

Representation of critical natural capital in China

Traditional means of assessing representativeness of conservation value in protected areas depend on measures of structural biodiversity. The effectiveness of priority conservation areas at representing critical natural capital (CNC) (i.e., an essential and renewable subset of natural capital) remains largely unknown. We analyzed the representativeness of CNC‐conservation priority areas in national nature reserves (i.e., nature reserves under jurisdiction of the central government with large spatial distribution across the provinces) in China with a new biophysical‐based composite indicator approach. With this approach, we integrated the net primary production of vegetation, topography, soil, and climate variables to map and rank terrestrial ecosystems capacities to generate CNC. National nature reserves accounted for 6.7% of CNC‐conservation priority areas across China. Considerable gaps (35.2%) existed between overall (or potential) CNC representativeness nationally and CNC representation in national reserves, and there was significant spatial heterogeneity of representativeness in CNC‐conservation priority areas at the regional and provincial levels. For example, the best and worst representations were, respectively, 13.0% and 1.6% regionally and 28.9% and 0.0% provincially. Policy in China is transitioning toward the goal of an ecologically sustainable civilization. We identified CNC‐conservation priority areas and conservation gaps and thus contribute to the policy goals of optimization of the national nature reserve network and the demarcation of areas critical to improving the representativeness and conservation of highly functioning areas of natural capital. Moreover, our method for assessing representation of CNC can be easily adapted to other large‐scale networks of conservation areas because few data are needed, and our model is relatively simple.     

Evaluating Private Land Conservation in the Cape Lowlands,South Africa

Abstract: Evaluation is important for judiciously allocating limited conservation resources and for improving conservation success through learning and strategy adjustment. We evaluated the application of systematic conservation planning goals and conservation gains from incentive‐based stewardship interventions on private land in the Cape Lowlands and Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. We collected spatial and nonspatial data (2003–2007) to determine the number of hectares of vegetation protected through voluntary contractual and legally nonbinding (informal) agreements with landowners; resources spent on these interventions; contribution of the agreements to 5‐ and 20‐year conservation goals for representation and persistence in the Cape Lowlands of species and ecosystems; and time and staff required to meet these goals. Conservation gains on private lands across the Cape Floristic Region were relatively high. In 5 years, 22,078 ha (27,800 ha of land) and 46,526 ha (90,000 ha of land) of native vegetation were protected through contracts and informal agreements, respectively. Informal agreements often were opportunity driven and cheaper and faster to execute than contracts. All contractual agreements in the Cape Lowlands were within areas of high conservation priority (identified through systematic conservation planning), which demonstrated the conservation plan's practical application and a high level of overlap between resource investment (approximately R1.14 million/year in the lowlands) and priority conservation areas. Nevertheless, conservation agreements met only 11% of 5‐year and 9% of 20‐year conservation goals for Cape Lowlands and have made only a moderate contribution to regional persistence of flora to date. Meeting the plan's conservation goals will take three to five times longer and many more staff members to maintain agreements than initially envisaged.     

Alignment between values of dryland pastoralists and conservation needs for small mammals

Policies for conservation outside protected areas, such as those designed to address the decline in Australian mammals, will not result in net improvements unless they address barriers to proenvironmental behavior. We used a mixed‐methods approach to explore potential value‐action gaps (disconnects between values and subsequent action) for small mammal conservation behaviors among pastoralists in dryland Australia. Using semistructured surveys and open‐ended interviews (n = 43), we explored values toward small mammals; uptake of a range of current and intended actions that may provide benefit to small mammals; and potential perceived barriers to their uptake. Pastoralists assigned great conservation value to small mammals; over 80% (n = 36) agreed to strongly agreed that small mammals on their property were important. These values did not translate into stated willingness to engage in voluntary cessation of wild‐dog control (r² = 0.187, p = 0.142, n = 43). However, assigning great conservation value to small mammals was strongly related to stated voluntary willingness to engage in the proenvironmental behavior most likely to result in benefits to small mammals: cat and fox control (r² = 0.558, p = 0.000, n = 43). There was no significant difference between stated voluntarily and incentivized willingness to engage in cat and fox control (p = 0.862, n = 43). The high levels of willingness to engage in voluntary cat and fox control highlight a potential entry point for addressing Australia's mammal declines because the engagement of pastoralists in conservation programs targeting cat and fox control is unlikely to be prevented by attitudinal constraints. Qualitative data suggest there is likely a subpopulation of pastoralists who value small mammals but do not wish to engage in formal conservation programs due to relational barriers with potential implementers. A long‐term commitment to engagement with pastoralists by implementers will thus be necessary for conservation success. On‐property cat and fox control programs that build and leverage trust, shared goals, collaboration, and shared learning experiences between stakeholders and that explicitly recognize the complexity of small mammal dynamics and the property‐level ecological knowledge of pastoralists are more likely to gain traction.     

Transforming conservation science and practice for a postnormal world

We examine issues to consider when reframing conservation science and practice in the context of global change. New framings of the links between ecosystems and society are emerging that are changing peoples’ values and expectations of nature, resulting in plural perspectives on conservation. Reframing conservation for global change can thus be regarded as a stage in the evolving relationship between people and nature rather than some recent trend. New models of how conservation links with transformative adaptation include how decision contexts for conservation can be reframed and integrated with an adaptation pathways approach to create new options for global‐change‐ready conservation. New relationships for conservation science and governance include coproduction of knowledge that supports social learning. New processes for implementing adaptation for conservation outcomes include deliberate practices used to develop new strategies, shift world views, work with conflict, address power and intergenerational equity in decisions, and build consciousness and creativity that empower agents to act. We argue that reframing conservation for global change requires scientists and practitioners to implement approaches unconstrained by discipline and sectoral boundaries, geopolitical polarities, or technical problematization. We consider a stronger focus on inclusive creation of knowledge and the interaction of this knowledge with societal values and rules is likely to result in conservation science and practice that meets the challenges of a postnormal world.     

Toward Best Practices for Developing Regional Connectivity Maps

Abstract: To conserve ecological connectivity (the ability to support animal movement, gene flow, range shifts, and other ecological and evolutionary processes that require large areas), conservation professionals need coarse‐grained maps to serve as decision‐support tools or vision statements and fine‐grained maps to prescribe site‐specific interventions. To date, research has focused primarily on fine‐grained maps (linkage designs) covering small areas. In contrast, we devised 7 steps to coarsely map dozens to hundreds of linkages over a large area, such as a nation, province, or ecoregion. We provide recommendations on how to perform each step on the basis of our experiences with 6 projects: California Missing Linkages (2001), Arizona Wildlife Linkage Assessment (2006), California Essential Habitat Connectivity (2010), Two Countries, One Forest (northeastern United States and southeastern Canada) (2010), Washington State Connected Landscapes (2010), and the Bhutan Biological Corridor Complex (2010). The 2 most difficult steps are mapping natural landscape blocks (areas whose conservation value derives from the species and ecological processes within them) and determining which pairs of blocks can feasibly be connected in a way that promotes conservation. Decision rules for mapping natural landscape blocks and determining which pairs of blocks to connect must reflect not only technical criteria, but also the values and priorities of stakeholders. We recommend blocks be mapped on the basis of a combination of naturalness, protection status, linear barriers, and habitat quality for selected species. We describe manual and automated procedures to identify currently functioning or restorable linkages. Once pairs of blocks have been identified, linkage polygons can be mapped by least‐cost modeling, other approaches from graph theory, or individual‐based movement models. The approaches we outline make assumptions explicit, have outputs that can be improved as underlying data are improved, and help implementers focus strictly on ecological connectivity.