We assessed attainability of landscape‐level conservation planning goals in the United States portion of the Prairie Pothole Region by summarizing and analyzing data on status, trends, and potential future of grasslands and wetlands. All published literature and new data analyses consistently indicate declines in grassland and wetland area. When we incorporated time as a conservation planning metric, the importance of seemingly small wetland (0.05–0.57%) and grassland (0.4–1.3%) annual loss rates became apparent. Moreover, we highlighted large differences in the amount of future grassland (30–67%) and wetland (47–93%) resulting from seemingly small changes in loss percentages. Our analyses clearly demonstrate that time, along with current status and trends of target habitat(s), must be incorporated when setting habitat conservation goals, otherwise goals may be unrealistic. Prairie Pothole Joint Venture (PPJV) partners protected an average of 0.20% of the 3.3 million ha extant wetlands and 0.26% of the 10.7 million ha extant grasslands/year. Consequently, PPJV partners cannot reach stated conservation goals given current habitat loss rates unless 1) increased funding is secured for land conservation, 2) landowner interest and acceptance of conservation programs remains high, and 3) wetland and grassland loss rates are decreased via public policy, particularly through agriculture programs, or other mechanisms. Otherwise, PPJV habitat conservation goals, and ultimately species population goals, will need to be reduced accordingly. Our comprehensive assessment may help the PPJV and other landscape‐level planning efforts discriminate between goals they would like to attain versus goals they are likely to achieve. © 2013 The Wildlife Society.

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As human populations grow, decisions regarding use of the world's finite land base become increasingly complex. We adopted a land use–conflict scenario involving renewable energy to illustrate one potential cause of these conflicts and resulting tradeoff decisions. Renewable energy industries wishing to expand operations in the United States are limited by multijurisdictional regulations in finding developable land. Interest groups entreat industries to avoid land for various reasons, including avoidance of prime wildlife habitat in accordance with an “avoidance-first” mitigation strategy. By applying a uniform set of rules for renewable energy facilities to the Prairie Pothole Region and portions of the Northern Great Plains, we evaluated the effects of regulations and avoidance of prime wildlife habitat on the amount of land available for development. In our scenario, existing regulations excluded 39% of the project area from potential development, with human infrastructure accounting for 30% (10–66% among states), whereas federally protected species accounted for < 1% at project area and state levels. Unregulated lands accounted for 61% of the project area, with conservation areas predicted as high-quality sites for breeding grassland birds and waterfowl and for migrating whooping cranes Grus americana accounting for 19% within the project area (6–27% among states). This model demonstrated a limited land base available for new development when accounting for regulations and concerns of a subset of societal interest groups. Additional interest groups likely will have different and competing concerns, further emphasizing the complexity of future land-use decisions as the available land base for development diminishes.