The influence of biophysical and socio-economic factors on the effectiveness of private land conservation areas in preventing natural land cover loss across South Africa
Date
2021-06-09
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier B.V.
Abstract
There is increasing interest in the potential of private land conservation areas (PLCAs) as a
complementary biodiversity conservation strategy to state-owned protected areas. However,
there is limited understanding of how the diverse social-ecological contexts of PLCAs influence
their effectiveness in conserving biodiversity. Here, we investigated how the effectiveness of
South African PLCAs in conserving biodiversity varied across social-ecological contexts, using
natural land cover as a proxy. Social-ecological contexts were represented by biophysical and
legal factors (distance to towns and roads, elevation, slope, terrain ruggedness, rainfall, PLCA
size, distance to state-owned national parks, and presence of legal protection) and, for a subset of
commercially-operated PLCAs, management factors (adopted business model, and profitability).
Biophysical and legal contextual factors had low explanatory power in the best model for the
nationwide analysis (n = 5121 PLCAs). For a subset of PLCAs (n = 72) we found that effectiveness
depended on the strategy they adopted to generate an income, as opposed to the amount of income
itself. PLCAs that attracted high volumes of visitors to small properties to view charismatic
“Big 5” wildlife were less effective in conserving natural land cover than larger, more exclusive
“Big 5” PLCAs and those focused on hunting. Overall, site-specific management factors were
better at explaining the effectiveness of PLCAs than biophysical factors. Our findings indicate that
conservation practitioners and policy makers need to recognise the diverse goals, motivations and
management models of PLCAs when considering how to support them in conserving biodiversity.
Future studies could explore whether these trends hold for other proxies of biodiversity conservation,
beyond land cover change.
Description
CITATION: Shumba, T. et al. 2021. The influence of biophysical and socio-economic factors on the effectiveness of private land conservation areas in preventing natural land cover loss across South Africa, Global Ecology and Conservation 28(2021):12 pages. doi.10.1016/j.gecco.2021.e01670
The original publication is available at: sciencedirect.com
The original publication is available at: sciencedirect.com
Keywords
Biodiversity conservation -- Africa, Southern, Ecotourism -- Africa, Southern, Hunting, Management strategies, Natural land cover change, Protected areas -- South Africa -- Management, Social-ecological, Private land conservation areas
Citation
Shumba, T. et al. 2021. The influence of biophysical and socio-economic factors on the effectiveness of private land conservation areas in preventing natural land cover loss across South Africa, Global Ecology and Conservation 28(2021):12 pages. doi.10.1016/j.gecco.2021.e01670