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Conservation Biology and Private Land: Shifting the Focus

Conservation Biology and Private Land: Shifting the Focus In his Conservation Biology editorial, Richard Knight (1999) emphasizes the importance of considering private as well as public lands in addressing conservation issues and highlights the alarming changes that are occurring on private lands. Although he focused primarily on the United States, the points made by Knight apply to most other countries. Using New Zealand as a case study, I developed Knight's arguments to identify three issues we need to tackle if conservation biology efforts are to successfully conserve indigenous biodiversity on private land. With around 30% of its land area within the public conservation estate, New Zealand has one of the highest protected land areas of any country ( Anonymous 1997 ). Although this figure is impressive, it hides the bias toward upland mountainous areas and the relatively poor protection of lowland areas within conservation lands ( Norton 1999 ). For example, less than 20% of lands below 500 m are part of the conservation estate, whereas some 50% of lands above 500 m are. The reasons for this upland‐lowland imbalance are well known and result from the high value that lowland environments have for productive (economic) activities. But as a result, some ecosystem types have been http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Conservation Biology Wiley

Conservation Biology and Private Land: Shifting the Focus

Conservation Biology , Volume 14 (5) – Oct 18, 2000

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References (9)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company
ISSN
0888-8892
eISSN
1523-1739
DOI
10.1046/j.1523-1739.2000.01451.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

In his Conservation Biology editorial, Richard Knight (1999) emphasizes the importance of considering private as well as public lands in addressing conservation issues and highlights the alarming changes that are occurring on private lands. Although he focused primarily on the United States, the points made by Knight apply to most other countries. Using New Zealand as a case study, I developed Knight's arguments to identify three issues we need to tackle if conservation biology efforts are to successfully conserve indigenous biodiversity on private land. With around 30% of its land area within the public conservation estate, New Zealand has one of the highest protected land areas of any country ( Anonymous 1997 ). Although this figure is impressive, it hides the bias toward upland mountainous areas and the relatively poor protection of lowland areas within conservation lands ( Norton 1999 ). For example, less than 20% of lands below 500 m are part of the conservation estate, whereas some 50% of lands above 500 m are. The reasons for this upland‐lowland imbalance are well known and result from the high value that lowland environments have for productive (economic) activities. But as a result, some ecosystem types have been

Journal

Conservation BiologyWiley

Published: Oct 18, 2000

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