What can the Apple Teach the Orange? Lessons U.S. Land Trusts can Learn from the National Trust in the U.K.

The National Trust in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland is one of the oldest and most revered private land conservation organizations in the world. While the private land conservation movements in the United States and the United Kingdom began at a similar time and with similar tools, conservation attitudes and methods in the two countries diverged. Today, the National Trust dominates land conservation in the U.K. while the strength of the U.S. movement is the energy of over 1,500 smaller organizations operating at different scales across the country. Despite the differences, this project looks to the National Trust in England and concludes that three elements of the National Trust’s experience provide important insights for U.S. land trusts rethinking their programs as political and environmental change engulfs the planet. First, the National Trust has gone through several iterations in its understanding of general public benefit and public access to protected properties in a way that most U.S. land trusts have yet to do. Second, National Trust experience suggests that U.S. land trusts could become more engaged in land-use regulations rather than presenting themselves primarily as an alternative (private, compensated, voluntary) thereto. Finally, the National Trust’s approaches to balancing agricultural productivity with sustainability provide useful models to study and emulate in the management of working landscapes. Many of the lessons learned by the National Trust could enrich private land conservation in the United States in an era of government withdrawal from environmental protection and growing impacts of climate change

Challenges and opportunities in biodiversity conservation on private land : an institutional perspective from Central Europe and North America

Private land is gradually emerging as a global biodiversity conservation strategy for its potential to complement the existing protected area model in its attempt to halt the global biodiversity loss. However, involving private lands in conserving a public good face continuous challenges. While examining landowners’ motivations for conserving their land is imperative to its success, it is equally important to assess how other stakeholder groups perceive private land conservation. In order to capture the diversity and contrasts in implementing private land conservation, this research focuses on investigating the managerial perspectives on the status of private land conservation in two countries: USA and Poland. The paper presents the results of twenty five in-depth interviews that were conducted in the two countries. The US context, with a longer history and experience, captured complex interactions and factors that influence private land conservation, including role of conservation policies, civic sector organizations, stakeholder collaboration, technical and financial support, and nonmonetary motivations of landowners. The Polish context however, was limited to the regulatory model and as such did not differentiate private land conservation from traditional protected areas. Additionally, the lack of voluntary initiatives along with adequate policies and lack of awareness on private land conservation at a national and local level contributed to limited scope and understanding on the subject. The two case studies highlight the context dependency of such a strategy and bring to focus some of the factors that should be addressed while adopting conservation on private land as a biodiversity conservation strategy

Landscape-Scale Prioritization Process for Private Land Conservation in Alberta

There are 12 conservation land trust organizations (CLTOs) in the province of Alberta, Canada that actively steward land. Together they have protected over 1.09 million hectares of land. Using in-depth interview data with published documents on CLTOs, this paper examines how CLTOs make decisions as to which projects to pursue and the kinds of justifications they offer for the projects they have completed. We identify 13 aspects that such a decision-making process should contain. The CLTOs studied have, to some degree, incorporated 7 of them. The remaining 6 aspects could easily be contributing substantially to some of the main the challenges identified in both the literature and our own research regarding private land conservation. Consequently, we recommend developing a robust landscape-scale approach to private land conservation, communicating that approach to all CLTOs, and increasing cooperation among CLTOs and between them and government. Keywords Private land conservation . Land trusts . Alberta . Landscape ecology . Conservatio

Public Access to Spatial Data on Private-Land Conservation

Information is critical for environmental governance. The rise of digital mapping has the potential to advance private-land conservation by assisting with conservation planning, monitoring, evaluation, and accountability. However, privacy concerns from private landowners and the capacity of conservation entities can influence efforts to track spatial data. We examine public access to geospatial data on conserved private lands and the reasons data are available or unavailable. We conduct a qualitative comparative case study based on analysis of maps, documents, and interviews. We compare four conservation programs involving different conservation tools: conservation easements (the growing but incomplete National Conservation Easement Database), regulatory mitigation (gaps in tracking U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s endangered species habitat mitigation), contract payments (lack of spatial data on U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program due to Farm Bill restrictions), and property-tax incentives (online mapping of Wisconsin’s managed forest tax program). These cases illuminate the capacity and privacy reasons for current incomplete or inaccessible spatial data and the politics of mapping private land. If geospatial data are to contribute fully to planning, evaluation, and accountability, we recommend improving information system capacity, enhancing learning networks, and reducing legal and administrative barriers to information access, while balancing the right to information and the right to privacy

Economic Approaches to Public and Private Land Conservation in the United States

This research is composed of two essays, both using economic approaches to evaluate land conservation in the United States. Essay I uses econometric methods to evaluate public lands, and Essay II uses New Institutional Economics to gain insight into private land conservation. Essay I is titled The Relationship Between Public Conservation Lands and Tourism Employment in the United States. This research examines the relationship between public conservation lands and the importance of tourism in United States counties. A spatial error model is used on three categories of conservation land: general public land, recreational land, and wilderness areas. A positive, significant relationship was shown between all three categories of conservation lands and the proportion of county employment in tourism. This research suggests that land conservation and economic development are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and that a stronger relationship between the tourism industry and conservation groups might be beneficial. Essay II is titled, Institutional Analysis Applied to United States Private Land Conservation. United States land conservation, once dominated by government agencies, is increasingly performed by land trusts and other private conservation groups. This activity often takes the form of a land trusts collaborating with private landowners in enacting conservation easements. The rapid growth in private land conservation can be explained in part with insights from institutional analysis. One branch of institutional analysis looks at how institutions, or the \u27rules of the game\u27, influence how organizations form and in turn push for institutional change. This can be used to explain how United States tax laws and conservation easement enabling statutes interacted with land trusts and other conservation organizations to enable the rapid growth of private land conservation. This research contains insights into organizational and institutional issues that may be useful to ecosystem managers and conservation planners. A multidisciplinary approach is increasingly emphasized as necessary to the future of ecosystem and biodiversity conservation. This research contributes insights from economics that can be used in this multidisciplinary effort

Financial incentives for private land conservation in the United States

Moderator: Gert Dry.Presented at the 8th international congress for wildlife and livelihoods on private and communal lands: livestock, tourism, and spirit, that was held on September 7-12, 2014 in Estes Park, Colorado.Americans have supported private land conservation for more than 30 years. In that time, the nation's 1,700 land trusts have helped landowners conserve more than 47 million acres of farm and ranch land, wildlife habitat, and open space around the country, including more than 1.2 million acres in Colorado. Financial incentives play a critical role in these efforts. This session will provide an overview of these incentives, including federal, state and local tax benefits available to conservation-minded landowners, as well as government and private funding options. This session is not intended to provide legal, financial or accounting advice. Rather, it will give participants a working knowledge of the financial incentives available for conservation in the United States, with a particular focus on Colorado

Optimizing Private Land Conservation and Public Land Use Planning/Regulation

Report of the 2010 Berkley Workshop Held at the Pocantico Conference Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund - July 201

Sharpening the skein: assessing and targeting perpetual private land conservation programs

Kaylan Kemink assessed outcomes from a private land conservation program in the US Prairie Pothole Region. Her results supported including dynamics into prioritisation strategies, the need for impact evaluation, and highlighted non-financial motives for leveraging participation in the future. Regional non-profit organizations are using the results of her study

Approaches and Tools to Solving Complex Problems in Private Land Conservation

The central theme throughout my four portfolio pieces is: approaches and tools that can be used to address complex problems involving private land conservation. I consider the broader human and environmental community health to be factors in successful private land conservation. The first portfolio piece examines a number of studies of conservation easements implemented to improve water quality, as well as their utility in avoiding land use conflict. My second portfolio piece is a reflective paper on my experience conducting a stakeholder assessment for the organization OneMontana. The assessment focused on creating a shared understanding of the issues related to land ownership and business transitions on agricultural land in Montana. Appended to this piece is the final report I co-authored for OneMontana on my research. My Third portfolio piece is a final report on a situation assessment I conducted for The Nature Conservancy. The assessment examined a successful floodplain restoration program in Washington State, and through stakeholder interviews created an understanding of local needs to determine feasibility of an analogous program in Montana. My final portfolio piece is a reflective essay comparing my experiences and the different contexts of my work with OneMontana and The Nature Conservancy.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/grad_portfolios/1325/thumbnail.jp