How to integrate cost, threat and multiple actions into conservation planning for reserves and stewardship

Abstract

Reservation and stewardship are two of the most widely applied conservation interventions in Australia and globally. Systematic conservation planning tools such as 'Marxan' can be used to support cost-effective spending on these or other interventions by determining efficient options in a landscape that meet conservation targets. We describe the appropriate problem formulation for spatial systematic conservation planning and summarise advancements in current approaches. We focus on three important features that have improved the applicability of 'Marxan' (and some other tools) to real world conservation planning. These are ( 1) incorporating spatially variable costs and multiple costs, (2) accounting for threats such as climate change, and (3) integrating multiple conservation interventions or actions within a single step of the problem. Our findings suggest that omission of costs, threats and multiple actions where they should be included can result in poor efficiency and hence the misallocation of funds. We are continually testing these ideas on real world problems.