Assessing the shelf life of cost‐efficient conservation plans for species at risk across gradients of agricultural land use

High costs of land in agricultural regions warrant spatial prioritization approaches to conservation that explicitly consider land prices to produce protected‐area networks that accomplish targets efficiently. However, land‐use changes in such regions and delays between plan design and implementation may render optimized plans obsolete before implementation occurs. To measure the shelf life of cost‐efficient conservation plans, we simulated a land‐acquisition and restoration initiative aimed at conserving species at risk in Canada's farmlands. We accounted for observed changes in land‐acquisition costs and in agricultural intensity based on censuses of agriculture taken from 1986 to 2011. For each year of data, we mapped costs and areas of conservation priority designated using Marxan. We compared plans to test for changes through time in the arrangement of high‐priority sites and in the total cost of each plan. For acquisition costs, we measured the savings from accounting for prices during site selection. Land‐acquisition costs and land‐use intensity generally rose over time independent of inflation (24–78%), although rates of change were heterogeneous through space and decreased in some areas. Accounting for spatial variation in land price lowered the cost of conservation plans by 1.73–13.9%, decreased the range of costs by 19–82%, and created unique solutions from which to choose. Despite the rise in plan costs over time, the high conservation priority of particular areas remained consistent. Delaying conservation in these critical areas may compromise what optimized conservation plans can achieve. In the case of Canadian farmland, rapid conservation action is cost‐effective, even with moderate levels of uncertainty in how to implement restoration goals.     

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.     

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.     

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     

Conservation Planning when Costs Are Uncertain

Abstract: Spatially explicit information on the financial costs of conservation actions can improve the ability of conservation planning to achieve ecological and economic objectives, but the magnitude of this improvement may depend on the accuracy of the cost estimates. Data on costs of conservation actions are inherently uncertain. For example, the cost of purchasing a property for addition to a protected‐area network depends on the individual landholder's preferences, values, and aspirations, all of which vary in space and time, and the effect of this uncertainty on the conservation priority of a site is relatively untested. We investigated the sensitivity of the conservation priority of sites to uncertainty in cost estimates. We explored scenarios for expanding (four‐fold) the protected‐area network in Queensland, Australia to represent a range of vegetation types, species, and abiotic environments, while minimizing the cost of purchasing new properties. We estimated property costs for 17, 790 10 × 10 km sites with data on unimproved land values. We systematically changed property costs and noted how these changes affected conservation priority of a site. The sensitivity of the priority of a site to changes in cost data was largely dependent on a site's importance for meeting conservation targets. Sites that were essential or unimportant for meeting targets maintained high or low priorities, respectively, regardless of cost estimates. Sites of intermediate conservation priority were sensitive to property costs and represented the best option for efficiency gains, especially if they could be purchased at a lower price than anticipated. Thus, uncertainty in cost estimates did not impede the use of cost data in conservation planning, and information on the sensitivity of the conservation priority of a site to estimates of the price of land can be used to inform strategic conservation planning before the actual price of the land is known.     

Obstacles to Bottom‐Up Implementation of Marine Ecosystem Management

Abstract: Ecosystem management (EM) offers a means to address multiple threats to marine resources. Despite recognition of the importance of stakeholder involvement, most efforts to implement EM in marine systems are the product of top‐down regulatory control. We describe a rare, stakeholder‐driven attempt to implement EM from the bottom up in San Juan County, Washington (U.S.A.). A citizens advisory group led a 2‐year, highly participatory effort to develop an ecosystem‐based management plan, guided by a preexisting conservation‐planning framework. A key innovation was to incorporate social dimensions by designating both sociocultural and biodiversity targets in the planning process. Multiple obstacles hindered implementation of EM in this setting. Despite using a surrogate scheme, the information‐related transaction costs of planning were substantial: information deficits prevented assessment of some biodiversity targets and insufficient resources combined with information deficits prevented scientific assessment of the sociocultural targets. Substantial uncertainty, practical constraints to stakeholder involvement, and the existence of multiple, potentially conflicting, objectives increased negotiation‐related costs. Although information deficits and uncertainty, coupled with underinvestment in the transaction costs of planning, could reduce the long‐term effectiveness of the plan itself, the social capital and momentum developed through the planning process could yield unforeseeable future gains in protection of marine resources. The obstacles we identified here will require early and sustained attention in efforts to implement ecosystem management in other grassroots settings.     

The value of flexibility in conservation financing

Land‐acquisition strategies employed by conservation organizations vary in their flexibility. Conservation‐planning theory largely fails to reflect this by presenting models that are either extremely inflexible—parcel acquisitions are irreversible and budgets are fixed—or extremely flexible—previously acquired parcels can readily be sold. This latter approach, the selling of protected areas, is infeasible or problematic in many situations. We considered the value to conservation organizations of increasing the flexibility of their land‐acquisition strategies through their approach to financing deals. Specifically, we modeled 2 acquisition‐financing methods commonly used by conservation organizations: borrowing and budget carry‐over. Using simulated data, we compared results from these models with those from an inflexible fixed‐budget model and an extremely flexible selling model in which previous acquisitions could be sold to fund new acquisitions. We then examined 3 case studies of how conservation organizations use borrowing and budget carry‐over in practice. Model comparisons showed that borrowing and budget carry‐over always returned considerably higher rewards than the fixed‐budget model. How they performed relative to the selling model depended on the relative conservation value of past acquisitions. Both the models and case studies showed that incorporating flexibility through borrowing or budget carry‐over gives conservation organizations the ability to purchase parcels of higher conservation value than when budgets are fixed without the problems associated with the selling of protected areas.     

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.     

Equity trade‐offs in conservation decision making

Conservation decisions increasingly involve multiple environmental and social objectives, which result in complex decision contexts with high potential for trade‐offs. Improving social equity is one such objective that is often considered an enabler of successful outcomes and a virtuous ideal in itself. Despite its idealized importance in conservation policy, social equity is often highly simplified or ill‐defined and is applied uncritically. What constitutes equitable outcomes and processes is highly normative and subject to ethical deliberation. Different ethical frameworks may lead to different conceptions of equity through alternative perspectives of what is good or right. This can lead to different and potentially conflicting equity objectives in practice. We promote a more transparent, nuanced, and pluralistic conceptualization of equity in conservation decision making that particularly recognizes where multidimensional equity objectives may conflict. To help identify and mitigate ethical conflicts and avoid cases of good intentions producing bad outcomes, we encourage a more analytical incorporation of equity into conservation decision making particularly during mechanistic integration of equity objectives. We recommend that in conservation planning motivations and objectives for equity be made explicit within the problem context, methods used to incorporate equity objectives be applied with respect to stated objectives, and, should objectives dictate, evaluation of equity outcomes and adaptation of strategies be employed during policy implementation.     

Reorienting Systematic Conservation Assessment for Effective Conservation Planning

Abstract: Systematic conservation assessment (an information‐gathering and prioritization process used to select the spatial foci of conservation initiatives) is often considered vital to conservation‐planning efforts, yet published assessments have rarely resulted in conservation action. Conservation assessments may lead more directly to effective conservation action if they are reoriented to inform conservation decisions. Toward this goal, we evaluated the relative priority for conservation of 7 sites proposed for the first forest reserves in the Union of the Comoros, an area with high levels of endemism and rapidly changing land uses in the western Indian Ocean. Through the analysis of 30 indicator variables measured at forest sites and nearby villages, we assessed 3 prioritization criteria at each site: conservation value, threat to loss of biological diversity from human activity, and feasibility of reserve establishment. Our results indicated 2 sites, Yiméré and Hassera‐Ndrengé, were priorities for conservation action. Our approach also informed the development of an implementation strategy and enabled an evaluation of previously unexplored relations among prioritization criteria. Our experience suggests that steps taken to ensure the closer involvement of practitioners, include a broader range of social data, encourage stakeholder participation, and consider the feasibility of conservation action can improve the relevance of assessments for conservation planning, strengthen the scientific basis for conservation decisions, and result in a more realistic evaluation of conservation alternatives.     

Conservation Planning with Multiple Organizations and Objectives

Abstract: There has been a dramatic increase in the number of conservation organizations worldwide. It is now common for multiple organizations to operate in the same landscape in pursuit of different conservation goals. New objectives, such as maintenance of ecosystem services, will attract additional funding and new organizations to conservation. Systematic conservation planning helps in the design of spatially explicit management actions that optimally conserve multiple landscape features (e.g., species, ecosystems, or ecosystem services). But the methods used in its application implicitly assume that a single actor implements the optimal plan. We investigated how organizational behavior and conservation outcomes are affected by the presence of autonomous implementing organizations with different objectives. We used simulation models and game theory to explore how alternative behaviors (e.g., organizations acting independently or explicitly cooperating) affected an organization's ability to protect their feature of interest, and investigated how the distribution of features in the landscape influenced organizations’ attitudes toward cooperation. Features with highly correlated spatial distributions, although typically considered an opportunity for mutually beneficial conservation planning, can lead to organizational interactions that result in lower levels of protection. These detrimental outcomes can be avoided by organizations that cooperate when acquiring land. Nevertheless, for cooperative purchases to benefit both organizations’ objectives, each must forgo the protection of land parcels that they would consider to be of high conservation value. Transaction costs incurred during cooperation and the sources of conservation funding could facilitate or hinder cooperative behavior.     

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.     

Some Guiding Concepts for Conservation Biology

Abstract: The search for generalities in ecology has often been thwarted by contingency and ecological complexity that limit the development of predictive rules. We present a set of concepts that we believe succinctly expresses some of the fundamental ideas in conservation biology. (1) Successful conservation management requires explicit goals and objectives. (2) The overall goal of biodiversity management will usually be to maintain or restore biodiversity, not to maximize species richness. (3) A holistic approach is needed to solve conservation problems. (4) Diverse approaches to management can provide diverse environmental conditions and mitigate risk. (5) Using nature's template is important for guiding conservation management, but it is not a panacea. (6) Focusing on causes not symptoms enhances efficacy and efficiency of conservation actions. (7) Every species and ecosystem is unique, to some degree. (8) Threshold responses are important but not ubiquitous. (9) Multiple stressors often exert critical effects on species and ecosystems. (10) Human values are variable and dynamic and significantly shape conservation efforts. We believe most conservation biologists will broadly agree these concepts are important. That said, an important part of the maturation of conservation biology as a discipline is constructive debate about additional or alternative concepts to those we have proposed here. Therefore, we have established a web‐based, online process for further discussion of the concepts outlined in this paper and developing additional ones.     

Multispecies genetic objectives in spatial conservation planning

Growing threats to biodiversity and global alteration of habitats and species distributions make it increasingly necessary to consider evolutionary patterns in conservation decision making. Yet, there is no clear‐cut guidance on how genetic features can be incorporated into conservation‐planning processes, despite multiple molecular markers and several genetic metrics for each marker type to choose from. Genetic patterns differ between species, but the potential tradeoffs among genetic objectives for multiple species in conservation planning are currently understudied. We compared spatial conservation prioritizations derived from 2 metrics of genetic diversity (nucleotide and haplotype diversity) and 2 metrics of genetic isolation (private haplotypes and local genetic differentiation) in mitochondrial DNA of 5 marine species. We compared outcomes of conservation plans based only on habitat representation with plans based on genetic data and habitat representation. Fewer priority areas were selected for conservation plans based solely on habitat representation than on plans that included habitat and genetic data. All 4 genetic metrics selected approximately similar conservation‐priority areas, which is likely a result of prioritizing genetic patterns across a genetically diverse array of species. Largely, our results suggest that multispecies genetic conservation objectives are vital to creating protected‐area networks that appropriately preserve community‐level evolutionary patterns.     

The Grain of Spatially Referenced Economic Cost and Biodiversity Benefit Data and the Effectiveness of a Cost Targeting Strategy

Facing tight resource constraints, conservation organizations must allocate funds available for habitat protection as effectively as possible. Often, they combine spatially referenced economic and biodiversity data to prioritize land for protection. We tested how sensitive these prioritizations could be to differences in the spatial grain of these data by demonstrating how the conclusion of a classic debate in conservation planning between cost and benefit targeting was altered based on the available information. As a case study, we determined parcel‐level acquisition costs and biodiversity benefits of land transactions recently undertaken by a nonprofit conservation organization that seeks to protect forests in the eastern United States. Then, we used hypothetical conservation plans to simulate the types of ex ante priorities that an organization could use to prioritize areas for protection. We found the apparent effectiveness of cost and benefit targeting depended on the spatial grain of the data used when prioritizing parcels based on local species richness. However, when accounting for complementarity, benefit targeting consistently was more efficient than a cost targeting strategy regardless of the spatial grain of the data involved. More pertinently for other studies, we found that combining data collected over different spatial grains inflated the apparent effectiveness of a cost targeting strategy and led to overestimation of the efficiency gain offered by adopting a more integrative return‐on‐investment approach.     

Safeguarding Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in the Little Karoo,South Africa

Abstract: Global declines in biodiversity and the widespread degradation of ecosystem services have led to urgent calls to safeguard both. Responses to this urgency include calls to integrate the needs of ecosystem services and biodiversity into the design of conservation interventions. The benefits of such integration are purported to include improvements in the justification and resources available for these interventions. Nevertheless, additional costs and potential trade‐offs remain poorly understood in the design of interventions that seek to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services. We sought to investigate the synergies and trade‐offs in safeguarding ecosystem services and biodiversity in South Africa's Little Karoo. We used data on three ecosystem services—carbon storage, water recharge, and fodder provision—and data on biodiversity to examine several conservation planning scenarios. First, we investigated the amount of each ecosystem service captured incidentally by a conservation plan to meet targets for biodiversity only while minimizing opportunity costs. We then examined the costs of adding targets for ecosystem services into this conservation plan. Finally, we explored trade‐offs between biodiversity and ecosystem service targets at a fixed cost. At least 30% of each ecosystem service was captured incidentally when all of biodiversity targets were met. By including data on ecosystem services, we increased the amount of services captured by at least 20% for all three services without additional costs. When biodiversity targets were reduced by 8%, an extra 40% of fodder provision and water recharge were obtained and 58% of carbon could be captured for the same cost. The opportunity cost (in terms of forgone production) of safeguarding 100% of the biodiversity targets was about US$500 million. Our results showed that with a small decrease in biodiversity target achievement, substantial gains for the conservation of ecosystem services can be achieved within our biodiversity priority areas for no extra cost.     

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.     

Local Land‐Use Planning to Conserve Biodiversity: Planners’ Perspectives on What Works

Abstract: Because habitat loss due to urbanization is a primary threat to biodiversity, and land‐use decisions in urbanizing areas are mainly made at the local level, land‐use planning by municipal planning departments has a potentially important—but largely unrealized—role in conserving biodiversity. To understand planners’ perspectives on the factors that facilitate and impede biodiversity conservation in local planning, we interviewed directors of 17 municipal planning departments in the greater Seattle (Washington, U.S.A.) area and compared responses of planners from similar‐sized jurisdictions that were “high” and “low performing” with respect to incorporation of biodiversity conservation in local planning. Planners from low‐performing jurisdictions regarded mandates from higher governmental levels as the primary drivers of biodiversity conservation, whereas those from high‐performing jurisdictions regarded community values as the main drivers, although they also indicated that mandates were important. Biodiversity conservation was associated with presence of local conservation flagship elements (e.g., salmonids) and human‐centered benefits of biodiversity conservation (e.g., quality of life). Planners from high‐ and low‐performing jurisdictions favored different planning mechanisms for biodiversity conservation, perhaps reflecting differences in funding and staffing. High performers reported more collaborations with other entities on biodiversity issues. Planners’ comments indicated that the term biodiversity may be problematic in the context of local planning. The action most planners recommended to increase biodiversity conservation in local planning was public education. These results suggest that to advance biodiversity conservation in local land‐use planning, conservation biologists should investigate and educate the public about local conservation flagships and human benefits of local biodiversity, work to raise ecological literacy and explain biodiversity more effectively to the public, and promote collaboration on biodiversity conservation among jurisdictions and inclusion of biodiversity specialists in planning departments.     

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.