The promise of U.S. private lands for reaching 21st century conservation targets

Coincident with an international movement to protect 30% of global land and sea over the next decade, the United States has committed to more than doubling its current protected land area by 2030. While federally-managed protected areas have been the cornerstone of area-based conservation in the United States and globally over the past century, such areas are both difficult to establish and have limited capacity to protect areas of highest value for biodiversity and carbon storage. Here we show that private land conservation in the form of conservation easements has been more effective than federal protected areas in targeting areas of high value for biodiversity and climate change mitigation. Specifically, protected private lands were more commonly in areas designated as high conservation priority, held significantly higher species richness than protected public lands and held more above ground carbon per unit area.

Exploring private land conservation non-adopters’ attendance at outreach events in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, USA

Background Outreach events such as trainings, demonstrations, and workshops are important opportunities for encouraging private land operators to adopt voluntary conservation practices. However, the ability to understand the effectiveness of such events at influencing conservation behavior is confounded by the likelihood that attendees are already interested in conservation and may already be adopters. Understanding characteristics of events that draw non-adopters can aid in designing events and messaging that are better able to reach beyond those already interested in conservation. Methods For this study, we interviewed 101 operators of private agricultural lands in Maryland, USA, and used descriptive statistics and qualitative comparative analysis to investigate differences between the kinds of outreach events that adopters and non-adopters attended. Results Our results suggested that non-adopters, as compared to adopters, attended events that provided production-relevant information and were logistically easy to attend. Further, non-adopters were more selective when reading advertisements, generally preferring simplicity. Future research and outreach can build on these findings by experimentally testing the effectiveness of messages that are simple and relevant to farmers’ production priorities.

Multiple social network influences can generate unexpected environmental outcomes

Understanding the function of social networks can make a critical contribution to achieving desirable environmental outcomes. Social-ecological systems are complex, adaptive systems in which environmental decision makers adapt to a changing social and ecological context. However, it remains unclear how multiple social influences interact with environmental feedbacks to generate environmental outcomes. Based on national-scale survey data and a social-ecological agent-based model in the context of voluntary private land conservation, our results suggest that social influences can operate synergistically or antagonistically, thereby enabling behaviors to spread by two or more mechanisms that amplify each other’s effects. Furthermore, information through social networks may indirectly affect and respond to isolated individuals through environmental change. The interplay of social influences can, therefore, explain the success or failure of conservation outcomes emerging from collective behavior. To understand the capacity of social influence to generate environmental outcomes, social networks must not be seen as ‘closed systems’; rather, the outcomes of environmental interventions depend on feedbacks between the environment and different components of the social system.