Michael Drielsma

Expanding conservation on private land is essential for many countries to achieve global biodiversity conservation and restoration targets. Planning in these socially and environmentally diverse landscapes requires approaches that are fit for purpose that account for both human and ecological values. Although systematic conservation planning offers a structured framework to address human‐nature interdependencies, its applicability to private land conservation is not well understood. We reviewed 66 peer‐reviewed systematic conservation planning studies across 44 countries to evaluate how people, including landholders and other stakeholders, are incorporated into private land conservation planning. Although landholders and other stakeholders are central to private land conservation outcomes, 21% of studies did not consider these perspectives at all, and only 29% engaged these groups directly through stakeholder workshops, participatory planning, or landholder surveys. Most studies (73%) relied on indirect socio‐economic proxies to represent social values, which may miss key insights into feasibility and long‐term success. We apply the results of the review to propose an enhanced systematic conservation planning framework tailored to private land conservation contexts. We argue that when landholders’ and other stakeholders’ perspectives are integrated into the planning process, private land conservation efforts are more likely to be beneficial for both people and nature.

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.

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 (NSW), Australia, exploring four planning approaches that consider or are ignorant to landholder preferences and the tender process and/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.

In many regions species are declining due to fragmentation and loss of habitat. If species persistence is to be achieved, ecologically informed, effective conservation action is required. Yet it remains a challenge to identify optimal places in a landscape to direct habitat reconstruction and management. Rather than relying on individual landscape metrics, process-based regional scale assessment methodology is needed that focuses primarily on species persistence. This means integrating, according to species’ ecology, habitat extent, suitability, quality and spatial configuration. The rapid evaluation of metapopulation persistence (REMP) methodology has been developed for this purpose. However, till now no practical conservation planning application of REMP has been described. By integration of expert ecological knowledge, we extended REMP’s capabilities to prioritize conservation action for a highly modified agricultural region of central NSW, Australia based on the metapopulation ecology of 34 fauna species. The region’s current capacity to support the species was evaluated in relation to the pre-European state for which there was known viability. Six of the species were found to currently have insufficient habitat to support viable populations. Seeking locations to maximize overall improvement in viability for these species, we prioritized conservation action to locations near the threshold of metapopulation persistence.