Evaluating Private Land Conservation in the Cape Lowlands, South Africa

Abstract

Evaluation is important for judiciously allocating limited conservation resources and for improving conservation success through learning and strategy adjustment. We evaluated the application of systematic conservation planning goals and conservation gains from incentive-based stewardship interventions on private land in the Cape Lowlands and Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. We collected spatial and nonspatial data (2003-2007) to determine the number of hectares of vegetation protected through voluntary contractual and legally nonbinding (informal) agreements with landowners; resources spent on these interventions; contribution of the agreements to 5- and 20-year conservation goals for representation and persistence in the Cape Lowlands of species and ecosystems; and time and staff required to meet these goals. Conservation gains on private lands across the Cape Floristic Region were relatively high. In 5 years, 22,078 ha (27,800 ha of land) and 46,526 ha (90,000 ha of land) of native vegetation were protected through contracts and informal agreements, respectively. Informal agreements often were opportunity driven and cheaper and faster to execute than contracts. All contractual agreements in the Cape Lowlands were within areas of high conservation priority (identified through systematic conservation planning), which demonstrated the conservation plan's practical application and a high level of overlap between resource investment (approximately R1.14 million/year in the lowlands) and priority conservation areas. Nevertheless, conservation agreements met only 11% of 5-year and 9% of 20-year conservation goals for Cape Lowlands and have made only a moderate contribution to regional persistence of flora to date. Meeting the plan's conservation goals will take three to five times longer and many more staff members to maintain agreements than initially envisaged.

Top‐down conservation targets and bottom‐up management action: creating complementary feedbacks for freshwater conservation

“…Extensive co‐ordination and co‐operation across the horizontal dimension is needed to fully enable systemic conservation governance of freshwater ecosystems, including recognition that private landowners and other sectors can contribute (Calhoun et al ., ). This is similar to realizations in the early 2000s following spatial prioritizations for achieving terrestrial conservation targets (Pence et al ., ) and the subsequent diversification into adopting off‐reserve conservation measures, such as voluntary biodiversity stewardship agreements (von Hase et al ., ).…”

Old fields increase habitat heterogeneity for arthropod natural enemies in an agricultural mosaic

“…This is particularly important in this setting where the conservation of remnant vegetation is a central component of farmland conservation programmes (Viers et al, 2013). Many remnants in this region are under stewardship agreements, which contributes to the protection of critical habitats (von Hase et al, 2010). In addition, remnants on neighbouring farms are often managed collectively as conservancies, forming networks of key biodiversity areas.…”

Exploring the Permanence of Conservation Covenants

“…It is widely recognized that stemming the decline of biodiversity requires a greater focus on conservation efforts targeting private land. With private land covering a large part of the terrestrial landmass and supporting important biodiversity, its significance for conservation is gaining prominence in many countries, including Australia, Canada, the USA, New Zealand, Chile, and South Africa (Langholz & Lassoie 2001;Ewing 2008;Fishburn et al 2009;von Hase et al 2010). The approaches used by policy-makers to conserve biodiversity on private land vary considerably, from voluntary to incentives-based schemes to regulation.…”