Viable Reserve Networks Arise From Individual Landholder Responses To Conservation Incentives

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Conservation in densely settled biodiversity hotspots often requires setting up reserve networks that maintain sufficient contiguous habitat to support viable species populations. Because it is difficult to secure landholder compliance with a tightly constrained reserve network design, attention has shifted to voluntary incentive mechanisms, such as purchase of conservation easements by reverse auction or through a fixed-price offer. These mechanisms carry potential advantages of transparency, simplicity, and low cost. However, uncoordinated individual response to these incentives has been assumed incompatible with the conservation goal of viability, which depends on contiguous habitat and biodiversity representation. We model such incentives for southern Bahia in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, one of the biologically richest and most threatened global biodiversity hotspots. Here, forest cover is spatially autocorrelated and associated with depressed land values, a situation that may be characteristic of longsettled areas with forests fragmented by agriculture. We find that in this situation, a voluntary incentive system can yield a reserve network characterized by large, viable patches of contiguous forest, and representation of subregions with distinct vegetation types and biotic assemblages, without explicit planning for those outcomes.

“Agro-terrorism? The causes and consequences of the appearance of witch’s broom disease in cocoa plantations of southern Bahia, Brazil”

“…It is important to observe that both the economic crisis and Witch's Broom could be bringing serious consequences to the Atlantic Forest, most of which has already been lost in Brazil (Chomitz et al 2006;Saatchi et al 2001). The cocoa region of southern Bahia is one of the richest centers of endemism in the Atlantic Rain Forest (Thomas et al 1998) and an important biodiversity "hotspot" (Brown 1975;Fonseca 1985;Mittermeier et al 1982;Myers et al 2000).…”

Reforestation at a Landscape Scale

“…These approaches may be efficient in finding an optimal biological solution but they are often difficult to implement and, at least in many tropical countries, are sometimes politically unrealistic (Chomitz et al 2006;Knight 2006;Knight et al 2006). There are at least six problems in using this essentially technical and topdown approach.…”

“…An example of how this might work is given by Chomitz et al (2006) who explored the use of a reverse auction to conserve regrowth forests in the Atlantic forest area of Brazil. The region is one where landscapes contain a mixture of land uses and where residual forest and secondary forests tend to occur on land that is least attractive for agriculture.…”

“…These tools are often used to target the needs of just one or two species of interest or, perhaps, a group such as birds. Planning is carried out with the biological attributes and habitat needs of these species or this group in mind (Dobson et al 1999). This approach addresses the current threat to these species and seeks to correct this within the existing biological and socio-economic environment by targeting areas to improve landscape linkages.…”

“…The region is one where landscapes contain a mixture of land uses and where residual forest and secondary forests tend to occur on land that is least attractive for agriculture. Chomitz et al (2006) carried out a simulation of the process whereby a hypothetical government agency with a fixed budget invites bids from landowners specifying the amount and quality of existing forest cover on their land and the minimum one-time payment that would induce them to put the property onto a permanent conservation easement. The agency then rates the quality of the submissions based on the amount of forest and its capacity to recover.…”