Monitoring and evaluating the social and psychological dimensions that contribute to privately protected area program effectiveness

Highlights

• Monitoring and evaluating participant motivations, challenges and satisfaction is important for PPA effectiveness

• In Australia conservation values and protecting land in perpetuity are the main motivations to participate in PPA programs

• PPA landholders expect visits from stewardship officers for management guidance and enforcement monitoring

• PPA landholders face management challenges such as age, time, costs and lack of self-efficacy

• Social and psychological dynamism (management efficacy, satisfaction and ownership of covenants) present risks to PPAS

Abstract

Privately protected areas (PPAs) make important contributions towards global conservation goals. As with any protected area, PPAs must be monitored for effectiveness at protecting and managing biodiversity. However, the key drivers of maintaining and improving the effectiveness of PPAs are often social, particularly for conservation covenants and easements that are owned and managed by private landholders. In Australia, we surveyed 527 covenant landholders across three states (New South Wales, Tasmania, and Victoria), to provide a benchmark for monitoring and evaluation activities. We found that landholders are mainly motivated to participate in order to protect their land in perpetuity, but come to expect financial and technical assistance as a benefit of the program. While 71.1% (n = 344) reported achieving their land management goals, 44.7% (n = 242) of landholders struggle with covenant management because of age, and financial and time constraints. Covenant landholders are generally satisfied with the program (92%). A subset (8%) of landholders feels disaffected with their participation, relating to their perceived inability to personally manage the biodiversity on their land, and the lack of interaction they have with representatives of covenanting organizations. Where compliance monitoring and semi-annual technical assistance is limited, some landholders are concerned that the efficacy of the covenant is reduced. To increase effectiveness we suggest that PPA programs regularly monitor landholder satisfaction and management needs, schedule conservation actions based on landholder capacity, and utilize landholder networks to spread information and foster communities of stewardship. Additionally, given the older demographics of landholders, programs should engage in PPA successional planning.

Introduction

Privately protected areas (PPAs) are recognized as an integral, though perhaps under-appreciated, approach to conservation and sustainable development (Bingham et al., 2017; Stolton et al., 2014). Expanding and managing the protected area (PA) estate onto privately owned land presents challenges different to those faced by government-owned PA networks. PPAs offer opportunities for conservation organizations to work collaboratively with landholders and potentially improve cost-efficiency of conservation funding (Main et al., 1999). However, the contexts in which PPA programs operate are complex, dynamic and diverse (Cooke et al., 2012), and to an extent, the decision-making and behavior of landholders can determine the degree to which ecological values are enhanced or compromised. As such, maintaining the social and ecological values embodied in PPAs necessitates ongoing monitoring, evaluation and refinement of these initiatives.

The most common approaches to the monitoring and evaluation of PAs have focused on those that are government operated, e.g., impact evaluations (Ferraro and Pattanayak, 2006; Hockings et al., 2006; Stem et al., 2005). These approaches have the benefit of providing an audit of the ecological values within the protected area (i.e., species, ecosystems, ecological and evolutionary processes, and/or ecosystem services), and ideally the management processes designed to maintain them (Cook et al., 2010; Hockings, 2003; Knight et al., 2011), both essential components of evaluating PPAs. However, for PPAs it is often the decision-making and behavior of landholders that typically determines the degree to which the ecological values are retained or improved. As such, understanding, fostering, monitoring and evaluating a landholder's commitment and capacity to manage their land as well as the land they manage, is fundamental to establishing and maintaining effective PPAs.

Previous studies have assessed the social dimensions of PPAs or other in perpetuity conservation mechanisms for privately held lands. A large amount of research has been devoted to understanding landholder motivations for adopting PPAs (e.g., Ernst and Wallace, 2008, Farmer et al., 2011, Horton et al., 2017, Kabii and Horwitz, 2006, Pasquini et al., 2010). Smaller bodies of research have examined landholder satisfaction with specific PPA programs (Feinberg, 1997; Forshay et al., 2005; Selinske et al., 2015; Stroman and Kreuter, 2016), management activities and post-enrollment needs (Farmer et al., 2017; Fitzsimons and Wescott, 2007; Stephens et al., 2002; Stroman and Kreuter, 2015) and the challenges landholders face in managing their lands to achieve conservation goals (Fitzsimons and Carr, 2014; Halliday et al., 2012; Horton et al., 2017). What is missing is a holistic representation of how these social dimensions interact with PPA programs to maintain landholder PPA stewardship.

In addition to its conceptualization as an ethic or moral philosophy (Leopold, 1949; Enqvist et al., 2018), stewardship has been defined as ‘actions taken by individuals, groups, or networks of actors, with various motivations and levels of capacity to protect, care for or responsibly use the environment in pursuit of environmental and/or social outcomes in diverse social-ecological contexts’ (Bennett et al., 2018: 599). Within a PPA context, both the landholders and PPA organizations are actors working collaboratively towards the stewardship of private lands (Cooke et al., 2012), though much of the management responsibility falls on the landholder. Designing and delivering effective PPA programs requires organizations to motivate private landholders to enroll their land, while also continuing to facilitate and monitor landholder's PPA stewardship post-enrollment (Selinske et al., 2017).

Previous research has found the capacity of PPA landholders for undertaking stewardship (time, money, physical abilities and knowledge) is heterogeneous (Kabii and Horwitz, 2006). Landholder motivations for stewardship can be both intrinsic (e.g. sense of purpose, conservation identity) and extrinsic (e.g. access to management expertise, financial opportunities, recognition) (Pasquini et al., 2010). Multiple mechanisms (e.g. tax incentives, stewardship officer outreach, protection in perpetuity) can be used to cater for the variety of motivations among a population and within individuals, and to build landholder capacity for PPA management (Selinske et al., 2017; Young et al., 1996). How well landholder expectations of program performance are met (e.g. regular stewardship officer visits, timely and efficient establishment of the PPA) shapes their experience in participating, as do the benefits (e.g. psychological wellbeing, financial, expansion of social networks) they perceive to be gaining (Cross et al., 2011; Farrier, 1995, Horton et al., 2017 Selinske et al., 2015). Over time, these factors may impact a landholder's satisfaction and so determine their commitment to the program, (as per conservation volunteer programs; Asah and Blahna, 2013; Miles et al., 1998). However, the factors that drive satisfaction may differ from those that motivated them to join the PPA program (Horton et al., 2017; Selinske et al., 2015), and are likely dynamic as a result of changes in the program, its context, and landholders needs (Lindsay, 2016).

We conceptualize PPA stewardship as long-term retention of a landholder in a program who exhibits compliance with a management agreement and to the agreed land use restrictions of the covenant. Although landholders managing covenanted PPAs may have in perpetuity agreements with a covenant/easement organization, there is no guarantee that they, or future landholders, will comply with their management agreements (Fitzsimons and Carr, 2014, although see Hardy et al., 2017). Buyers and inheritors have been known to be less enthusiastic about meeting management agreements and might be more likely to breach an in perpetuity contract (Collins, 2000; Rissman and Butsic, 2011). This presents compliance and enforcement issues for administering organizations, as well as questions for ecological integrity (Schuster and Arcese, 2015). A PPA program that monitors and responds to the social dynamism of PPAs such as landholder satisfaction, ownership changes, compliance and enforcement issues, and fluctuating landholder capacities, will be better suited to maintaining stewardship over the long term and delivering biodiversity benefits. We examine the factors that influence PPA stewardship and effectiveness in an Australian context.

Australia has among the most expansive and longest-running PPA programs in the world (Fitzsimons, 2015; Stolton et al., 2014), with a suite of mechanisms similar to other countries with well-developed PPA programs, such as New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. The Australian PPA estate is comprised of land owned and managed by 1) non-profit conservation organizations; and 2) individuals on freehold and/or leasehold lands protected by conservation covenant (Fitzsimons, 2015). Conservation covenants are voluntary legally-binding in-perpetuity agreements, written into the land title deeds, between a landholder and a covenanting-administering organization, typically a state government agency or not-for-profit land trust, with legal authority to sign such agreements under legislation (Fitzsimons, 2006). Covenants are accompanied by plans of management, stewardship visits, and staff phone-calls (Fitzsimons and Carr, 2014). Breaches of covenant agreements are reportedly rare (Hardy et al., 2017). Despite the relatively longevity of programs and number of covenants there have only been a small number of published surveys of the views, perceptions and behaviors of covenantors (e.g. Fitzsimons and Wescott, 2007; Halliday et al., 2012; Stephens et al., 2002).

In this research we aimed to 1) identify the levels of landholder satisfaction with Australian PPA programs and the factors that define it; 2) identify the challenges faced by landholders in managing their lands for biodiversity and in participating in a PPA program; 3) develop and advance a more holistic understanding of PPA stewardship and in so doing; 4) provide Australian conservation covenant programs guidance for planning and implementing their future monitoring, evaluation and program expansion activities.