Optimal investments in private land conservation depend more on landholder preferences than climate change

Effective private land conservation strategies that consider both landholder preferences and future climatic conditions are critical for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services. Yet, the interaction and relative importance of these factors for conservation planning performance is unknown. Her...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Brooke A Williams, Carla L Archibald, James Brazill-Boast, Michael J Drielsma, Rajesh Thapa, Jamie Love, Frankie H T Cho, Daniel Lunney, James A Fitzsimons, Md Sayed Iftekhar, Jaramar Villarreal-Rosas, Sarah Bekessy, Scott Benitez Hetherington, Clive A McAlpine, Linda J Beaumont, Jillian Thonell, Jonathan R Rhodes
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2024-01-01
Series:Environmental Research Letters
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad8d6b
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Effective private land conservation strategies that consider both landholder preferences and future climatic conditions are critical for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem services. Yet, the interaction and relative importance of these factors for conservation planning performance is unknown. Here, we assess the importance of considering landholder preferences and climate change for prioritising locations for conservation tenders to recruit landholders for conservation covenants. To achieve this we develop a planning framework that accounts for the tender process to optimise investment across regions and apply it to koala-focused tenders in New South Wales, Australia, exploring four planning approaches that consider or are ignorant to landholder preferences or climate change. We find that optimal investments depend more on landholder preferences than climate change, and when landholder preferences are ignored, there is little benefit in accounting for climate change. Our analysis reveals new insights into this important interaction.
ISSN:1748-9326