Land conservation programs not strategically targeting projects to control growth

A recent published study has found that land conservation programs in Northern California are not targeting their efforts to control the path of development and promote smart growth.

Public and private programs across the United States have protected millions of acres of habitat and agricultural land by acquiring conservation easements that extinguish the development rights of property. Many conservationists have theorized that these projects - if strategically placed- could have a kind of synergistic effect of helping to conserve the larger landscape.

One rule-of-thumb of strategic conservation planning is to preserve lands that are near existing conserved areas to create large blocks of protected properties. Another strategic approach in the U.S. is to locate conservation easements near the margins of officially designated urban growth boundaries to reinforce the (sometimes temporary) borders.

David Stoms and fellow researchers analyzed the pattern of protected lands - specifically agricultural conservation easements - in the suburban and rural counties of the San Francisco Bay Area as of 2002. They found that easements were no more likely to be located near other protected lands or urban growth boundaries than non-easement properties.

Interestingly they found that easement protected properties were more likely to have important agricultural values unto themselves. This suggest that while organizations have been doing a good job to protect lands with important conservation values - they have not been strategically targeting projects to protect the larger landscape. While the study looked at agricultural conservation, the overall issue is applicable to habitat as well.

The results should be read with some caution however. The data is 8 years old so programs may have changed their focus since then - and obviously the SF Bay Area does not necessarily reflect what is happening in other locations.

Also, these findings do not necessarily mean that strategically placed easements actually have any effect on the path of development - other studies need to further document empirical support for this. Finally, not all threats to conservation values come from the path of urban development. In much of the U.S., low-density, rural residential development represents a serious threat to agriculture and habitat.

Nevertheless the findings suggest that conservation organizations need to be more strategic in where they target land protection efforts. The authors liken strategic land conservation to a military mindset. They write,

"Think of defending a critical bridge against an advancing enemy on a battlefield.
What is the political and military value of the vulnerable lands on the defensive side of the river relative to lands accessible by other bridges? At the rate of farmland loss in many parts of the United States, finding ways to be strategic in purchasing development rights could potentially achieve a lot with a relatively small amount of farmland preservation."

--Reviewed by Rob Goldstein

Stoms, D., Jantz, P., Davis, F., & DeAngelo, G. (2009). Strategic targeting of agricultural conservation easements as a growth management tool Land Use Policy, 26 (4), 1149-1161 DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.02.004