Devising Appropriate Policies and Instruments in Support of Private Conservation Areas: Lessons Learned from the Klein Karoo,South Africa

Abstract: The amount of privately conserved land is increasing worldwide. The potential of these areas to contribute to the global conservation of biodiversity is significant, given that statutory protected areas alone will not suffice. Nevertheless, there is still inadequate support for private conservation areas, and further research on appropriate, flexible, and generally applicable incentive measures is necessary. We conducted 25 semistructured interviews with the owners of private conservation areas in the Little Karoo, South Africa, to examine landowner opinions of existing conservation policies and their relationships with the local conservation authority. We also assessed landowner preferences regarding conservation incentive measures. Landowners doubted the conservation authority's capacity to implement its stewardship program and were also discouraged by the bureaucracy of the program. The conservation authority was often viewed negatively, except where landowners had experienced personal contact from conservation staff or where strong social capital had formed among landowners. Landowners did not desire financial rewards for their conservation efforts, but sought recognition of their stewardship role and greater involvement from the conservation authority through personal contact. We conclude that conservation policies for private lands could benefit from the provision of extension services to landowners, promotion of formation of groups of landowners and other stakeholders, and public acknowledgment of the contributions private conservation areas make.     

Assessing the Ecological and Social Benefits of Private Land Conservation in Colorado

Abstract: Conservation of private land through conservation easements, development agreements, and clustered housing has increased greatly as have criticisms of the laws, public programs, and incentives that motivate landowners to use them. Rapid land‐use change at the urban–rural interface in Larimer County, Colorado, has given rise to programs that provide a variety of land‐conservation options for landowners. As of January 2005, roughly 60% of Larimer County was publicly owned, and 3% or 16,200 ha was privately owned with some form of protection. We used document analysis, a landowner survey, targeted interviews, and a landscape‐level spatial analysis to analyze the patterns, quantities, and qualities of private land conservation. We created a jurisdiction‐specific typology of desired benefits from local government‐planning documents to help evaluate conservation parcels. Most easements and other conservation documents used general terms and did not describe the site‐specific values of the land being conserved. Landowners were able to describe some benefits not included in parcel‐specific documents, and our spatial analysis revealed parcel‐specific and cumulative conservation benefits such as the amount of buffering, infill, connectivity, protected agricultural land, riparian protection, and other benefits not referenced by either documents or landowners. Conservation benefits provided by a parcel varied depending on its geographic location, the specific institution such as a land trust or open space program that a landowner worked with, and the conservation mechanism used, such as voluntary easement or residential clustering requirements. The methods we used provide a template for jurisdictions wishing to undertake a similar analysis. Our findings may assist other jurisdictions and institutions interested in improving how land‐conservation benefits are described; justify and inform future investments in private land conservation; assist local governments and other institutions with the assessment of program effectiveness; and be useful for conservation planners who wish to become more involved in on‐the‐ground implementation of conservation actions.     

The Ability of Landowners and Their Cooperatives to Leverage Payments Greater Than Opportunity Costs from Conservation Contracts

In negotiations over land‐right acquisitions, landowners have an informational advantage over conservation groups because they know more about the opportunity costs of conservation measures on their sites. This advantage creates the possibility that landowners will demand payments greater than the required minimum, where this minimum required payment is known as the landowner's willingness to accept (WTA). However, in recent studies of conservation costs, researchers have assumed landowners will accept conservation with minimum payments. We investigated the ability of landowners to demand payments above their WTA when a conservation group has identified multiple sites for protection. First, we estimated the maximum payment landowners could potentially demand, which is set when groups of landowners act as a cooperative. Next, through the simulation of conservation auctions, we explored the amount of money above landowners’ WTA (i.e., surplus) that conservation groups could cede to secure conservation agreements, again investigating the influence of landowner cooperatives. The simulations showed the informational advantage landowners held could make conservation investments up to 42% more expensive than suggested by the site WTAs. Moreover, all auctions resulted in landowners obtaining payments greater than their WTA; thus, it may be unrealistic to assume landowners will accept conservation contracts with minimum payments. Of particular significance for species conservation, conservation objectives focused on overall species richness, which therefore recognize site complementarity, create an incentive for landowners to form cooperatives to capture surplus. To the contrary, objectives in which sites are substitutes, such as the maximization of species occurrences, create a disincentive for cooperative formation. La Habilidad de Propietarios y Sus Cooperativas para Implementar Pagos Mayores que los Costos de Oportunidad en Contratos de Conservación     

Effects of preference heterogeneity among landowners on spatial conservation prioritization

The participation of private landowners in conservation is crucial to efficient biodiversity conservation. This is especially the case in settings where the share of private ownership is large and the economic costs associated with land acquisition are high. We used probit regression analysis and historical participation data to examine the likelihood of participation of Danish forest owners in a voluntary conservation program. We used the results to spatially predict the likelihood of participation of all forest owners in Denmark. We merged spatial data on the presence of forest, cadastral information on participation contracts, and individual‐level socioeconomic information about the forest owners and their households. We included predicted participation in a probability model for species survival. Uninformed and informed (included land owner characteristics) models were then incorporated into a spatial prioritization for conservation of unmanaged forests. The choice models are based on sociodemographic data on the entire population of Danish forest owners and historical data on their participation in conservation schemes. Inclusion in the model of information on private landowners’ willingness to supply land for conservation yielded at intermediate budget levels up to 30% more expected species coverage than the uninformed prioritization scheme. Our landowner‐choice model provides an example of moving toward more implementable conservation planning.     

Traps and transformations influencing the financial viability of tourism on private‐land conservation areas

The ability of private conservation organizations to remain financially viable is a key factor influencing their effectiveness. One‐third of financially motivated private‐land conservation areas (PLCAs) surveyed in South Africa are unprofitable, raising questions about landowners’ abilities to effectively adapt their business models to the socioeconomic environment. In any complex system, options for later adaptation can be constrained by starting conditions (path dependence). We tested 3 hypothesized drivers of path dependence in PLCA ecotourism and hunting business models: (H1) the initial size of a PLCA limits the number of mammalian game and thereby predators that can be sustained; (H2) initial investments in infrastructure limit the ability to introduce predators; and (H3) rainfall limits game and predator abundance. We further assessed how managing for financial stability (optimized game stocking) or ecological sustainability (allowing game to fluctuate with environmental conditions) influenced the ability to overcome path dependence. A mechanistic PLCA model based on simple ecological and financial rules was run for different initial conditions and management strategies, simulating landowner options for adapting their business model annually. Despite attempts by simulated landowners to increase profits, adopted business models after 13 years were differentiated by initial land and infrastructural assets, supporting H1 and H2. A conservation organization's initial assets can cause it to become locked into a financially vulnerable business model. In our 50‐year simulation, path dependence was overcome by fewer of the landowners who facilitated natural ecological variability than those who maintained constant hunting rates and predator numbers, but the latter experienced unsustainably high game densities in low rainfall years. Management for natural variability supported long‐term ecological sustainability but not shorter term socioeconomic sustainability for PLCAs. Our findings highlight trade‐offs between ecological and economic sustainability and suggest a role for governmental support of the private conservation industry.     

Motivating landowners to recruit neighbors for private land conservation

Encouraging motivated landowners to not only engage in conservation action on their own property but also to recruit others may enhance effectiveness of conservation on private lands. Landowners may only engage in such recruitment if they believe their neighbors care about the conservation issue, will positively respond to their conservation efforts, and are likely to take action for the conservation cause. We designed a series of microinterventions that can be added to community meetings to change these beliefs to encourage landowner engagement in recruitment of others. The microinterventions included neighbor discussion, public commitment making, collective goal setting, and increased observability of contributions to the conservation cause. In a field experiment, we tested whether adding microinterventions to traditional knowledge-transfer outreach meetings changed those beliefs so as to encourage landowners in Hawaii to recruit their neighbors for private lands conservation. We delivered a traditional outreach meeting about managing the invasive little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata) to 5 communities and a traditional outreach approach with added microinterventions to 5 other communities. Analysis of pre- and post-surveys of residents showed that compared with the traditional conservation outreach approach, the microinterventions altered a subset of beliefs that landowners had about others. These microinterventions motivated reputationally minded landowners to recruit and coordinate with other residents to control the invasive fire ant across property boundaries. Our results suggest integration of these microinterventions into existing outreach approaches will encourage some landowners to facilitate collective conservation action across property boundaries.     

The Role of Landowners in Jaguar Conservation in Sonora,Mexico

Abstract: The northernmost known breeding population of jaguars occurs in the municipality of Nácori Chico, Sonora, Mexico about 270 km from the United States–Mexico border and may be the source from which jaguars sighted in the United States dispersed. Since 1999 at least 11 jaguars (Panthera onca) had been illegally killed in the area due to predator control programs. We initiated a jaguar landowner‐based conservation plan in 2004. The eight participating landowners agreed to suspend predator control programs targeting jaguars and pumas (Puma concolor) only if cattle losses were compensated. A private outfitter, with the consent of landowners, initiated white‐tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) hunts in 2004 and agreed to pay the group of participating landowners US$1500 for every deer hunt permit sold. The funds paid to the landowners from deer hunts were sufficient to convince landowners to suspend all predator‐control efforts of jaguars and pumas. The involvement of landowners in the jaguar conservation program in northeastern Sonora is a successful, private, wildlife‐conservation initiative that provides an example for jaguar conservation efforts in northern Mexico.     

Plant-trait-based modeling assessment of ecosystem-service sensitivity to land-use change

Evidence is accumulating that the continued provision of essential ecosystem services is vulnerable to land-use change. Yet, we lack a strong scientific basis for this vulnerability as the processes that drive ecosystem-service delivery often remain unclear. In this paper, we use plant traits to assess ecosystem-service sensitivity to land-use change in subalpine grasslands. We use a trait-based plant classification (plant functional types, PFTs) in a landscape modeling platform to model community dynamics under contrasting but internally consistent land-use change scenarios. We then use predictive models of relevant ecosystem attributes, based on quantitative plant traits, to make projections of ecosystem-service delivery. We show that plant traits and PFTs are effective predictors of relevant ecosystem attributes for a range of ecosystem services including provisioning (fodder), cultural (land stewardship), regulating (landslide and avalanche risk), and supporting services (plant diversity). By analyzing the relative effects of the physical environment and land use on relevant ecosystem attributes, we also show that these ecosystem services are most sensitive to changes in grassland management, supporting current agri-environmental policies aimed at maintaining mowing of subalpine grasslands in Europe.     

Cultivated land – a scarce commodity in a densely populated rural area in South Wollo,Ethiopia

Cultivated and settlement areas were studied in a small area (14 km2) in South Wollo, Ethiopia, by aerial photos, satellite images, field observations and interviews. Areas for cultivation/rural settlement decreased a few per cent between 1958 and 2013. Cultivated land per household slowly decreased in 1958–2003 but in 2003–2013 the annual decrease was 3–4 times higher. New farm buildings are often built on cultivated land, and abandoned buildings areas return to cultivation. Rainwater harvesting ponds have increased the areas with perennial crops that are important as a source of income. Tin roofed buildings are signs of improved livelihood. Very small farm size and rain-dependent agriculture combined with climate variability make food security vulnerable. Land-use inventories including remote sensing and local knowledge would be a valuable approach to assess livelihood needs. Further, it should involve decision makers at different levels, but local agricultural extension officers may play a central role.     

Generating spatially optimized habitat in a trade‐off between social optimality and budget efficiency

Auctions have been proposed as alternatives to payments for environmental services when spatial interactions and costs are better known to landowners than to the conservation agency (asymmetric information). Recently, an auction scheme was proposed that delivers optimal conservation in the sense that social welfare is maximized. I examined the social welfare and the budget efficiency delivered by this scheme, where social welfare represents the difference between the monetized ecological benefit and the conservation cost incurred to the landowners and budget efficiency is defined as maximizing the ecological benefit for a given conservation budget. For the analysis, I considered a stylized landscape with land patches that can be used for agriculture or conservation. The ecological benefit was measured by an objective function that increases with increasing number and spatial aggregation of conserved land patches. I compared the social welfare and the budget efficiency of the auction scheme with an agglomeration payment, a policy scheme that considers spatial interactions and that was proposed recently. The auction delivered a higher level of social welfare than the agglomeration payment. However, the agglomeration payment was more efficient budgetarily than the auction, so the comparative performances of the 2 schemes depended on the chosen policy criterion–social welfare or budget efficiency. Both policy criteria are relevant for conservation. Which one should be chosen depends on the problem at hand, for example, whether social preferences should be taken into account in the decision of how much money to invest in conservation or whether the available conservation budget is strictly limited.     

Modeling the spatio-temporal dynamics and interactions of households,landscapes, and giant panda habitat

Human modification of land-cover has been a leading cause of floral and faunal species extirpation and loss of local and global biodiversity. As natural areas are impacted, habitat and populations can become fragmented and isolated. This is particularly evident in the mountainous areas of southwestern China that support the remaining populations of giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). Giant panda populations have been restricted to remnants of habitat from extensive past land use and land-cover change. Households are a basic socio-economic unit that continues to impact the remaining habitat through activities such as fuelwood consumption and new household creation. Therefore, we developed a spatio-temporal model of human activities and their impacts by directly integrating households into the landscape. The integrated model allows us to examine the landscape factors influencing the spatial distribution of household activities and household impacts on habitat. As an example application, we modeled household activities in a giant panda reserve in China and examined the spatio-temporal dynamics of households, the landscape, and their mutual interactions. Human impacts are projected to result in the loss of up to 16% of all existing habitat within the reserve over the next 30 years. In addition, we found that accessibility largely controls the spatial distribution of household activities and considerable changes in management and household activities will be required to maintain the current level of habitat within the reserve.     

The dynamics of shifting cultivation captured in an extended Constrained Cellular Automata land use model

This paper presents an extension to the Constrained Cellular Automata (CCA) land use model of White et al. [White, R., Engelen, G., Uljee, I., 1997. The use of constrained cellular automata for high-resolution modelling of urban land-use dynamics. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 24(3), 323–343] to make it better suited for modelling the dynamics of shifting cultivation. In the extended model the time passed since the last land use transition of a location is a factor of its land use potential. The model can now account for the gradual decrease in soil fertility after an area of forest has been cleared for cultivation and also capture the process of regeneration once the plot is fallowed. The model is applied for the Ruhunupura area of Sri Lanka where chena, a particular practice of shifting cultivation, is a common land use that dominates the landscape dynamics. The model is calibrated for the period 1985–2001 and the results are assessed in terms of location to location overlap as well as structural similarity at multiple scales. These results give confidence in the representation of land use dynamics for the main land use classes. On the basis of a long term scenario run for the period 2001–2030, it is verified that the model captures stylized facts related to chena dynamics, in particular shortening fallow periods and increasingly long cultivation periods of chena, as a result of increasing land use pressure.     

Using spatially explicit,time-dependent analysis to understand how social factors influence conservation outcomes

Conservation across human-dominated landscapes requires an understanding of the social and ecological factors driving outcomes. Studies that link conservation outcomes to social and ecological factors have examined temporally static patterns. However, there may be different social and ecological processes driving increases and decreases in conservation outcomes that can only be revealed through temporal analyses. Through a case study of the invasion of Falcataria moluccana in Hawaii, we examined the association of social factors with increases and decreases in invader distributions over time and space. Over 7 years, rates of invader decrease varied substantially (66–100%) relative to social factors, such as building value, whether land was privately or publically owned, and primary residence by a homeowner, whereas rates of increase varied only slightly (<0.1–3.6%) relative to such factors. These findings suggest that links between social factors and invasion in the study system may be driven more by landowners controlling existing invasive species, rather than by landowners preventing the spread of invasive species. We suggest that spatially explicit, time-dependent analyses provide a more nuanced understanding of the way social factors influence conservation outcomes. Such an understanding can help managers develop outreach programs and policies targeted at different types of landowners in human-dominated landscapes.     

The additionality problem with offsets: Optimal contracts for carbon sequestration in forests

Carbon offsets are a frequently discussed tool for reducing the costs of an emissions reduction policy. However, offsets have a basic problem stemming from asymmetric information. Sellers of offsets have private information about their opportunity costs, leading to concerns about whether offsets are additional. Non-additional offsets can undermine a cap-and-trade program or, if the government purchases them directly, result in enormous government expenditures. We analyze contracts for carbon sequestration in forests that mitigate the asymmetric information problem. Landowners are offered a menu of two-part contracts that induces them to reveal their type. Under this scheme, the government is able to identify ex post how much additional forest each landowner contributes and minimize ex ante its expenditures on carbon sequestration. To explore the performance of the contracting scheme, we conduct a national-scale simulation using an econometric model of land-use change. The results indicate that for an increase in forest area of 61 million acres, government expenditures are $5.3 billion lower under the contracting approach compared to a uniform subsidy offered to all landowners. This compares to an increase in private opportunity costs of just $110 million dollars under the contracts. Thus, the contracting scheme is preferable from society's perspective.     

Incentive Structure of and Private Landowner Participation in an Endangered Species Conservation Program

Abstract: In the United States, voluntary incentive programs that aid conservation of plant and wildlife species on private lands provide a structural solution to the problem of protecting endangered species by reducing costs and enhancing benefits to landowners. We explored the potential for incentives to encourage landowners to manage land cover for the benefit of endangered songbirds in central Texas (U.S.A.) by asking landowners to indicate their preferences for financial incentives, technical assistance, and regulatory assurances. We identified owners of potential songbird habitat and collected data in face‐to‐face interviews and self‐administered questionnaires. We used a latent‐class stated‐choice model to identify 3 classes of landowners whose choices varied on the basis of their attitudes and perceived social norms: (1) strong positive attitude, perceived social pressure to participate, and willing to participate with relatively few incentives, (2) weak positive attitude, perceived no social pressure to participate, and required strongest incentives, and (3) negative attitude, perceived social pressure not to enroll, and unwilling to participate regardless of incentive structure. Given this heterogeneity in preferences, conservation incentives may increase management of land cover to benefit endangered species on private lands to some degree; however, exclusive reliance on incentives may be insufficient. Promoting conservation on private lands may be enhanced by integrating incentives into an approach that incorporates other strategies for conservation, including social networks and collaborative processes that reinforce social norms.     

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.     

Cost‐effectiveness of conservation payment schemes for species with different range sizes

Payments to compensate landowners for carrying out costly land‐use measures that benefit endangered biodiversity have become an important policy instrument. When designing such payments, it is important to take into account that spatially connected habitats are more valuable for many species than isolated ones. One way to incentivize provision of connected habitats is to offer landowners an agglomeration bonus, that is, a bonus on top of payments they are receiving to conserve land if the land is spatially connected. Researchers have compared the cost‐effectiveness of the agglomeration bonus with 2 alternatives: an all‐or‐nothing, agglomeration payment, where landowners receive a payment only if the conserved land parcels have a certain level of spatial connectivity, and a spatially homogeneous payment, where landowners receive a payment for conserved land parcels irrespective of their location. Their results show the agglomeration bonus is rarely the most cost‐effective option, and when it is, it is only slightly better than one of the alternatives. This suggests that the agglomeration bonus should not be given priority as a policy design option. However, this finding is based on consideration of only 1 species. We examined whether the same applied to 2 species, one for which the homogeneous payment is best and the other for which the agglomeration payment is most cost‐effective. We modified a published conceptual model so that we were able to assess the cost‐effectiveness of payment schemes for 2 species and applied it to a grassland bird and a grassland butterfly in Germany that require the same habitat but have different spatial‐connectivity needs. When conserving both species, the agglomeration bonus was more cost‐effective than the agglomeration and the homogeneous payment; thus, we showed that as a policy the agglomeration bonus is a useful conservation‐payment option.     

Costs of expanding the network of protected areas as a response to climate change in the Cape Floristic Region

The expansion of protected areas is a critical component of strategies to promote the continued existence of biodiversity (i.e., life at all levels of biological organization) as climate changes, but scientific, social, and economic uncertainties associated with climate change are some of the major obstacles preventing such expansion. New models of climate change and species distribution and new methods of conservation planning now make it possible to explore the uncertainties associated with climate changes and species responses. Yet few reliable estimates of the costs of expanding protected areas and methods for determining these costs exist, largely because of the many (and uncertain) determinants of these costs. We developed a cost-accounting model to estimate the range in costs of various options for expanding protected areas and to explore the variables that drive these costs. Model development was informed by an existing plan to expand protected areas in the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa to address species conservation under a scenario of climate change. The 50-year present value of total costs varied from US$260 million ($1077/ha) for an off-reserve option that involves agreements with landowners and no compensation of forgone production and associated revenue to $1020 million ($4228/ha) for an on-reserve option that involves land acquisition and protection. The costs of acquiring land or compensating landowners for forgone production and development opportunities were the major drivers of the total costs across all options because most of the area identified in the protected-area expansion plan consisted of urban and high-quality agricultural lands. Total costs were also affected by changes in protected area extent and discount rate. Model-generated outputs such as these may be useful for informing implementation strategies and the allocation of future efforts in monitoring, data collection, and model development.     

Changes of Soil Microbiological Properties Caused by Land Use Changing From Rice–Wheat Rotation to Vegetable Cultivation

A survey was done recently in Jiaxing city of Zhejiang Province in the Yangtze River Delta to compare the differences of soil microbiological properties among paddy soils with different land use including continuous open-field vegetable cultivation (OFVC), plastic-greenhouse vegetable cultivation (PGVC) and traditional rice–wheat rotation (RWR). The soil types included are percolating, permeable and waterlogged paddy soils. The results indicate that the microbial flora was markedly changed as the land use changed for all the three soil types. In continuous vegetable cultivation soils, especially in PGVC soils, the bacteria amounts decreased dramatically, but the fungal and actinomyce amounts increased as compared with RWR soils. The dehydrogenase activities decreased significantly in vegetable soils, especially in PGVC soils as compared with RWR soils. The microbial biomass C and the total phospholipid contents (TPL) in vegetable cultivation soil greatly decreased as compared with RWR soils. Biolog analysis indicated that the kinds of carbon sources that could be metabolized by native microbes in PGVC soils greatly decreased as compared with OFVC soils and RWR soils, revealing that microbial diversity had decreased since land use change. The activities of some soil enzymes including urease, invertase and phosphase were all lower in OFVC soils than those in RWR soils, and those in PGVC soils were the lowest. The degradation of microbiological activities in continuous vegetable cultivation soils, especially in PGVC soils, as compared with RWR soils might have been caused by soil acidification and accumulation of salts due to overuse of both organic and inorganic fertilizers in vegetable cultivation.