The emergence of private land conservation in scientific literature: A review

Abstract

Private land conservation (PLC) is an important means for achieving global conservation targets. 8We reviewed peer-reviewed literature focussing on PLC to summarize past scientific evidence and 9 to identify research trends and gaps to direct future research. We carried out an in-depth review of 284 scientific articles and analysed where, when and in what context PLC has been studied. Specifically, we (i) assessed where and when PLC studies took place and which topics they covered; (ii) identified the most addressed conservation actions and policy instruments, and (iii) investigated whether stakeholders' engagement during research processes was reported or not. We found that (i) there has been an increase in the number of scientific PLC publications over time; (ii) 78% of the articles in scientific journals focussed on four countries only (United States of America, Australia, South Africa and Canada); (iii) literature content focussed mostly on easements, programs and landowners and showed both geographical and temporal differences; (iv) land/water protection, law and policy and livelihood, economic and other incentives were the most addressed conservation actions; (v) property rights, particularly conservation easements, were the most addressed policy instrument; and (vi) half of the articles did not report the engagement of any stakeholder sector and cross-sector stakeholders' engagement was often missing. Overall, our results highlight the need for future studies on PLC to cover currently underrepresented regions; to assess the effectiveness of more conservation actions and policy instruments; and to test how

The meaning(s) of place: Identifying the structure of sense of place across a social–ecological landscape

“…Privately held lands make up a large extent of the earth's surface; consequently, understanding how private landowners think about and react to ecosystem change is critical to developing behaviour change and policy interventions (Capano et al, 2019). Sense of place holds promise for understanding people's behaviour because when place attachment is strong, social or ecological changes that threaten important place meanings can also threaten one's identity (Stedman, 2016).…”

“…individuals and families) constitutes more than 60% of the United States (Bigelow & Borchers, 2017) and is critical to many landscape-scale management efforts (Bennett, Pejchar, Romero, Knight, & Berger, 2018). Private lands are imbedded within larger social-ecological systems and are of increasing global conservation importance (Capano, Toivonen, Soutullo, & Di Minin, 2019). Understanding sense of place on private lands is important because landowners are key arbiters of and responders to social-ecological change.…”

DENSITIES, PLANT SIZES, AND SPATIAL DISTRIBUTIONS OF SIX WILD POPULATIONS OFLOPHOPHORA WILLIAMSII(CACTACEAE) IN TEXAS, U.S.A

“…Most peyote populations in Texas grow on private land, therefore it was necessary to obtain permissions and consent from the landowners to conduct the research. Conservation work on private lands is a relatively new and promising field [49,50], which is especially relevant to the context of Texas, where 96% of land is privately owned [51]. Nevertheless, it takes time to gain trust from the local landowners, especially when it comes to discussing sensitive and controversial topics such as peyote conservation.…”

An interdisciplinary assessment of private conservation areas in the Western United States

“…In recent decades, the implementation of conservation strategies on private lands, hereafter private conservation areas (Pasquini et al 2010), is increasingly being recognized as a strategy to complement current protected areas networks (Cortes-Campano et al 2019). Currently, private conservation areas protect several million hectares of natural habitat and cultural landscapes across the world (e.g., Jones et al 2005;Sims-Castley et al 2005).…”

“…Furthermore, despite the increase in conservation easements in land conservation, the public remains largely unaware of this private land approach to conservation (Villamagna et al 2017). Implementing on-the-ground conservation actions on private land mostly depends on landowners' willingness to collaborate with conservation agencies and their management capabilities (Bastian et al 2017;Vizek and Nielsen-Pincus 2017;Cortes-Campano et al 2019).…”