Do Private Conservation Activities Match Science-Based Conservation Priorities?

Background Private land conservation is an essential strategy for biodiversity protection in the USA, where half of the federally listed species have at least 80% of their habitat on private lands. We investigated the alignment between private land protection conducted by the world's largest land trust (The Nature Conservancy) and the science driven identification of priority areas for conservation. This represents the first quantitative assessment of the influence of defining priority areas on the land acquisitions of a conservation non-governmental organization (NGO). Methodology/Principal Findings The lands acquired by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) were analyzed using GIS to determine to what extent they were in areas defined as priorities for conservation. The spatial analysis of TNC lands was broken up into land known to be acquired in the last five years, five to ten years ago, prior to ten years ago, and anytime during the last sixty years (including previous sets of data plus acquisitions lacking a date). For the entire history of TNC the proportion of TNC lands within the priority areas was 74%. Prior to 10 years ago it was 80%, 5–10 years ago it was 76%, and in the last five years it was 81%. Conservation easements were found to have lower alignment with priority areas (64%) than outright fee simple acquisitions (86%). Conclusions/Significance Overall the location of lands acquired was found to be well aligned with the priority areas. Since there was comparable alignment in lands acquired before and after formalized conservation planning had been implemented as a standard operating procedure, this analysis did not find evidence that defining priority areas has influenced land acquisition decisions.

• Publication year

  2012

• Venue

  PLoS ONE

• Publication date

  2012-09-28

• Fields of study

  Geography, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0046429PMID 23029516PMCID 3460893
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• Comparable alignment before and after formalized conservation planning provides no evidence that defining priority areas changed acquisition decisions.

  Confidence 0.91

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• Conservation easements showed lower alignment with conservation priority areas than fee simple acquisitions, at 64% versus 86%.

  Confidence 0.98

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• Alignment with conservation priority areas remained high across acquisition periods, at 80% before 10 years ago, 76% from 5 to 10 years ago, and 81% in the last five years.

  Confidence 0.94

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• Across The Nature Conservancy's full acquisition history, 74% of its lands fell within conservation priority areas.

  Confidence 0.98

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review

• conservation easements

  conservation instruments

  A land protection instrument that limits land use while the property remains under private ownership.

  Aliases: easements

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• conservation priority areas

  conservation areas

  Science-based areas identified as priorities for biodiversity conservation and used as the spatial benchmark in the analysis.

  Aliases: priority areas, conservation priorities

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• fee simple acquisitions

  conservation instruments, land acquisitions

  Acquisitions that transfer full ownership of land to The Nature Conservancy.

  Aliases: outright purchases, full ownership acquisitions

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• formalized conservation planning

  planning frameworks

  An organizational planning process that explicitly defines priority areas for conservation decisions.

  Aliases: standard operating procedure, formal conservation planning

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• gis spatial analysis

  method, measurement techniques

  A geographic information system approach used to measure overlap between acquired lands and priority areas.

  Aliases: GIS analysis, geospatial analysis

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• land acquisitions

  land holdings, acquisitions

  Land parcels acquired by The Nature Conservancy and grouped by acquisition period for comparison with priority areas.

  Aliases: acquired lands, TNC lands

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review
• the nature conservancy

  organization

  A global land trust and conservation nongovernmental organization whose acquired lands are evaluated in the paper.

  Aliases: TNC

  박진우 (dztg5apj7m) extractionB (s683577b42) reviewq (76h6bfydm6) review

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