The dynamics of proclaimed privately protected areas in South Africa over 83 years

Views that protected area (PA) expansion relies predominantly on land purchased by government are increasingly being challenged. The inclusion of privately owned PAs (PPAs) in national conservation strategies is now commonplace, but little is known about their long‐term persistence and how it compares to that of state‐owned PAs. We undertook the first long‐term assessment of the dynamics of a national system of terrestrial PPAs, assessing its growth, as well as its resilience to downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD). Between 1926 and 2018, 6.2% of all private nature reserves established in South Africa were degazetted, compared to 2.2% of state‐owned nature reserves. Privately owned PA growth exceeded that of state‐owned PAs. Trends in PA establishment differed between privately owned and state‐owned PAs, reflecting different legislative, political, and economic events. Our findings highlight the value of enabling legislative environments to facilitate PPA establishment, and demonstrate the potential of PPAs as a long‐term conservation strategy.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Conservation Letters

• Publication date

  2019-03-20

• Fields of study

  Business, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/conl.12644
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• One-third of global protected land is under intense human pressure

  2018cited by this paper
• Privately protected areas provide key opportunities for the regional persistence of large‐ and medium‐sized mammals

  2018cited by this paper
• Public access to spatial data on private-land conservation

  2017cited by this paper
• Protected areas as social-ecological systems: perspectives from resilience and social-ecological systems theory.

  2017influential reference
• Exploring the Permanence of Conservation Covenants

  2017cited by this paper
• An evaluation of landowners' conservation easements on their livelihoods and well-being

  2017cited by this paper
• Quantifying the extent of protected‐area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement in Australia

  2017influential reference
• Integration of private land conservation areas in a network of statutory protected areas: Implications for sustainability

  2016cited by this paper
• Money and motives: an organizational ecology perspective on private land conservation

  2016cited by this paper
• Understanding the Motivations, Satisfaction, and Retention of Landowners in Private Land Conservation Programs

  2015cited by this paper
• Conservation on private land: a review of global strategies with a proposed classification system

  2015cited by this paper
• Making parks make a difference: poor alignment of policy, planning and management with protected-area impact, and ways forward

  2015cited by this paper
• Global Protected Area Expansion: Creating More than Paper Parks

  2015cited by this paper
• The development of a tourism research framework by South African National Parks to inform management

  2014cited by this paper
• The performance and potential of protected areas

  2014cited by this paper
• Ecotourism as a conservation tool and its adoption by private protected areas in Brazil

  2014cited by this paper
• The futures of privately protected areas

  2014influential reference
• Benefits of wildlife-based land uses on private lands in Namibia and limitations affecting their development

  2013cited by this paper
• The economics and institutional economics of wildlife on private land in Africa

  2012influential reference
• Protected area downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD) and its conservation implications

  2011cited by this paper
• Biodiversity for development: South Africa’s landscape approach to conserving biodiversity and promoting ecosystem resilience.

  2010cited by this paper
• Conservation science: Trade-in to trade-up

  2010cited by this paper
• High and Far: Biases in the Location of Protected Areas

  2009cited by this paper
• The role of private conservation areas in biodiversity representation and target achievement within the Little Karoo region, South Africa

  2009cited by this paper
• Characteristics, Motivations, and Management Actions of Landowners Engaged in Private Land Conservation in Larimer County Colorado

  2008cited by this paper
• “Wilding the farm or farming the wild”? The evolution of scientific game ranching in South Africa from the 1960s to the present

  2008cited by this paper
• The role of multi-tenure reserve networks in improving reserve design and connectivity

  2008cited by this paper
• CAMPFIRE During Zimbabwe's National Crisis: Local Impacts and Broader Implications for Community-Based Wildlife Management

  2008cited by this paper
• Conservation Easements: Biodiversity Protection and Private Use

  2007cited by this paper
• African Foreing Relations as a Factor in Ecotourism Development: The Case of South Africa

  2006cited by this paper
• Farmers' Motivations for Adopting Conservation Practices along Riparian Zones in a Mid-western Agricultural Watershed

  2003cited by this paper
• Model selection and multimodel inference : a practical information-theoretic approach

  2003cited by this paper
• The Kruger National Park : a social and political history

  1995cited by this paper
• A new look at the statistical model identification

  1974cited by this paper

• Why verification and validation of public databases matters: Comment on “Using key and critical biodiversity areas to identify gaps in the protected area network in the Limpopo Province, South Africa”

  2025cites this paper
• Do private land conservation policies and programs adequately consider climate change?

  2025cites this paper
• The Judiciary's Contribution to Preventing Protected Area Downgrading, Downsizing, and Degazettement: Mining and Environmental Justice Community of South Africa v MEC for Agriculture, Rural Development Land and Environmental Affairs (1322/2021) [2024] ZAMPMBHC 48 (18 July 2024)

  2025cites this paper
• Sacred natural sites as other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMS) for biodiversity conservation in South Africa: Key opportunities and challenges for policy and practice

  2025cites this paper
• Assessing the political vulnerability of National Parks in sub‐Saharan Africa using data on digital trends and engagement

  2024cites this paper
• Conservation corridors and ecological networks in South Africa: shortcomings of environmental legislation and policies

  2023cites this paper
• Getting Ahead of the 'Game': The Reclassification of Wild Animals Contained in Protected Areas as Res Publicae"

  2023cites this paper
• A legal assessment of private land conservation in South America

  2023cites this paper
• Identifying key risks to the performance of privately protected areas (PPAs) through theory of change (ToC).

  2022cites this paper
• To be or not to be a protected area: A perverse political threat

  2022cites this paper
• Privately protected areas increase global protected area coverage and connectivity

  2022cites this paper
• Social-ecological change: insights from the Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society

  2022cites this paper
• Estimates of carnivore densities in a human-dominated agricultural matrix in South Africa

  2021cites this paper
• The biological, social, and political complexity of conserving oribi antelope Ourebia ourebi in South Africa

  2021cites this paper
• Empowering women to protect wildlife in former hunting tourism zones: a political ecology of Akashinga, Zimbabwe

  2021cites this paper
• The influence of biophysical and socio-economic factors on the effectiveness of private land conservation areas in preventing natural land cover loss across South Africa

  2021cites this paper
• Assessing landowners’ preferences to inform voluntary private land conservation: The role of non-monetary incentives

  2021cites this paper
• South Africa’s private wildlife ranches protect globally significant populations of wild ungulates

  2021cites this paper
• Cross-scale and social-ecological changes constitute main threats to private land conservation in South Africa

  2020cites this paper
• Area-based conservation in the twenty-first century

  2020cites this paper
• Effectiveness of private land conservation areas in maintaining natural land cover and biodiversity intactness

  2020cites this paper
• Climate change and the ownership of game: A concern for fenced wildlife areas

  2020cites this paper
• Quantifying the effectiveness of private land conservation areas in preventing losses of natural land cover and biodiversity intactness across South Africa

  2019influential citation
• The contribution of land tenure diversity to the spatial resilience of protected area networks

  2019cites this paper
• Cost‐effectiveness of public policy for the long‐term conservation of private lands: What is the deal?

  2019cites this paper
• Management of Eco-Tourism through Public-Private Partnerships in South Africa

  year unknowncites this paper