Natural resource management efforts have historically concentrated on ecological goals to identify and prioritize conservation actions. However, successful implementation of conservation actions on private land requires conservation opportunity, or the willingness of landholders to participate in and accept conservation actions. Conservation opportunity on private land depends on a range of structural and social factors. Recent research emphasizes the importance of social factors and suggests incorporating social factors in conservation actions is necessary for the long-term sustainability and equitability of environmental change. The social factor of trust has been shown to strongly influence landholder's decision-making. For this research, trust is defined as a belief that someone or something is good, reliable, honest, and effective. However, trust is complex and sometimes difficult to predict. In addition, trust can be regionally specific and little research exists on trust in the Pacific Northwest. This study seeks to increase understanding of trust and the importance of trust in conservation opportunity on private land in the Pacific Northwest. In this study, trust is comprised of six constructs: Personal Relationship, Social Structure, Reciprocity, Shared Worldview, Social Commitment, and Participation in Decision-Making. The researcher utilized self-administered surveys to measure landholders' level of trust in conservation organizations and answer three research questions: Are the constructs associated with trust as expected? Which constructs of trust are most important in a landholder's decision to participate in voluntary conservation programs? and What actions could these organizations take to improve trust? Surveys were distributed to participants and non-participants of four voluntary conservation programs in the Nooksack Watershed in Whatcom County, Washington. The research results suggest six primary findings. First, survey respondents report trust as equally or more important than other factors in determining conservation opportunity. Second, not all individuals have a uniform definition of trust, yet trust is strongly associated with the degree to which the landholder perceives an individual, institution, or program respects and understands their goals. Third, results distinguish two constructs being reported as most important in determining conservation opportunity within the study group: Social Commitment and Participation in Decision-Making. The construct items reported as least important are affiliation with other groups/individuals and obligation. Fourth, while the landholder's relationship with the organization's representative is important, they do not identify it as the most influential construct item. Fifth, although the literature shows the Shared Worldview construct can predict policy positions, the results of a Shared Worldview "short-form" survey indicate worldview may not be a predictor for who participates and what program they will participate in. Finally, both participants and non-participants believe the conservation organizations have the opportunity to earn or increase trust. Landholders' suggested actions to increase trust varied but included providing long-term on-the-ground work, improved communication, additional opportunities for landholder input, changes to the organization's governance, and effort to change state policy. While results cannot be extended to the general population, the findings have the potential to help conservation organizations within the Pacific Northwest build trust with landholders and increase landholder enrollment in conservation programs. In addition, the findings highlight areas for future research.

Since the earliest days of our nation, new communications and transportation networks have enabled vast changes in how and where Americans live and work. Transcontinental railroads and telegraphs helped to open the West; mass media and interstate highways paved the way for suburban migration. In our own day, the internet and advanced logistics networks are enabling new changes on the landscape, with both positive and negative impacts on our efforts to conserve land and biodiversity. Emerging technologies have led to tremendous innovations in conservation science and resource management as well as education and advocacy efforts. At the same time, new networks have been powerful enablers of decentralization, facilitating sprawling development into previously undesirable or inaccessible areas. Conservation in the Internet Age offers an innovative, cross-disciplinary perspective on critical changes on the land and in the field of conservation. The book: provides a general overview of the impact of new technologies and networks explores the potentially disruptive impacts of the new networks on open space and biodiversity presents case studies of innovative ways that conservation organizations are using the new networks to pursue their missions considers how rapid change in the Internet Age offers the potential for landmark conservation initiatives Conservation in the Internet Age is the first book to examine the links among land use, technology, and conservation from multiple perspectives, and to suggest areas and initiatives that merit further investigation. It offers unique and valuable insight into the challenges facing the land and biodiversity conservation community in the early twenty-first century, and represents an important new work for policymakers, conservation professionals, and academics in planning, design, conservation and resource management, policy, and related fields.

States are obligated to generate income from state trust lands to fund public institutions, through mining, grazing, agriculture, or logging. However, this report--a product of Western Lands and Communities, a joint program of the Lincoln Institute and the Sonoran Institute--shows how conservation can be an equally robust source of revenue. From the mid-1700s to the late 1950s, state trust lands were granted to states upon their entrance into the Union for the sole purpose of supporting public institutions, primarily K-12 public schools. Eighty-five percent of the remaining 46 million acres of state trust lands are concentrated in the West. This report explores current and recommended strategies to conserve state trust lands with ecological and environmental value, while maintaining the trust obligation to earn revenue for K-12 schools and other beneficiaries. Building on the Lincoln Institute's previous report, State Trust Lands in the West: Fiduciary Duty in a Changing Landscape (2006), and a companion website, State Trust Lands (statetrustlands.org), the authors evaluate the pros and cons of the conservation mechanisms that are currently available to state trust land management agencies, including conservation sales and leases through easements or outright fee-simple purchases, contributory value and nonmonetary value, ecosystems services markets, and land tenure and exchange. They also offer recommendations for new methods to realize revenue from conservation activity. Key recommendations are to: expand the use of conservation sales and leases; improve the utility of contributory value in the master planning process; increase access to ecosystem services markets; and streamline the land tenure adjustment process, which includes reform of the appraisal process. Monetizing conservation will provide opportunities for land management agencies to pursue conservation options. All state trusts carry the mandate to fund beneficiaries in perpetuity, indicating the need for sustainable land management practices.

Much of contemporary conservation science is devoted to developing algorithms and processes capable of identifying locations on the landscape where preservation, conservation, or restoration is necessary to retain functioning ecosystems and preserve biodversity. Despite a number of significant advances on this front, translating those priorities into actions remains a challenge. In this dissertation, I suggest that designing conservation strategies that address global change requires quantification of the role of humans, their institutions, and their environment in producing conservation action. Further, I argue that integrating these factors into spatially explicit, empirical estimates of the likelihood of conservation action is critical for identifying those locations where conservation action is both biologically necessary and socio-politically feasible. Chapter One presents an empirical framework for estimating the likelihood of conservation occurrence and illustrate its utility in a case study of conservation easements along the west coast of the United States. Results for that case study indcate that models that incorporate ecological, social, and institutional variables outperform models based solely on one class of variables. Chapter Two explores the role of ecological, social, and institutional context in differentiating between congressionally protected and presidentially protected areas in the United States. The anlaysis presented there indicates little evidence that different designation modes result target different environmental, institutional, or social contexts. Finally, Chapter Three explores the potential biases that arise due to incomplete or voluntary reporting of conservation action and develop an analytical method to facilitate broad-extent, high-resolution estimates of the probability of conservation easement occurrence. Results indicate that models that explicitly incorporate variation in reporting probability are substantially less biased than those that do not and that those biases can lead to substantial differences in inference based on a case study from Idaho and Montana.

Softbound - New, softbound print book.