Percentage of area protected can substitute for more complicated structural metrics when monitoring protected area connectivity

Yang, Wenxin; Kedron, Peter; Frazier, Amy E

doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2023.111387

ABSTRACT Conservation initiatives depend on interactions among organizations and communities that have different goals. Multilevel hierarchies provide a common decision‐making structure with different actors responsible for conservation decisions over nested spatial scales. We examine consequences of hierarchical decision‐making for spatial prioritization of new protected areas. We combine insights from general theory, an algebraic example, and a numerical application, the latter motivated by federal‐to‐state grant‐giving in the western United States. Working through a decision‐making hierarchy means fewer species can be protected for a given budget than suggested by analyses that ignore the role of conservation institutions in decision‐making. This efficiency cost results from higher level decision‐makers—the federal government in our numerical application—giving up control to lower level actors—state governments in this case. Ensuring close agreement over spatial priorities between actors can limit potential losses in how much biodiversity can be protected. By reallocating funds among lower level actors, the higher level actor can mitigate remaining losses. Spatial optimization approaches that ignore the integral role of institutions in conservation, like decision‐making hierarchies, overestimate what protected area programs can achieve and risk misallocating limited conservation funds. Accounting for multilevel decision‐making reveals where building consensus among actors will be particularly important and suggests alternative strategies that conservation funders can pursue.

More Like this