Opportunities for Cost-Sharing in Conservation: Variation in Volunteering Effort across Protected Areas

Zoe G Davies,Lisette Cantú-Salazar,Mark Parnell,Rob Stoneman,Paul R Armsworth,Josephine E Booth,Martin Krkosek

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0055395

Zoe G Davies, Lisette Cantú-Salazar + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0055395

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Abstract

Efforts to expand protected area networks are limited by the costs of managing protected sites. Volunteers who donate labor to help manage protected areas can help defray these costs. However, volunteers may be willing to donate more labor to some protected areas than others. Understanding variation in volunteering effort would enable conservation organizations to account for volunteer labor in their strategic planning. We examined variation in volunteering effort across 59 small protected areas managed by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, a regional conservation nonprofit in the United Kingdom. Three surveys of volunteering effort reveal consistent patterns of variation across protected areas. Using the most detailed of these sources, a survey of site managers, we estimate that volunteers provided 3200 days of labor per year across the 59 sites with a total value exceeding that of paid staff time spent managing the sites. The median percentage by which volunteer labor supplements management costs on the sites was 36%. Volunteering effort and paid management costs are positively correlated, after controlling for the effect of site area. We examined how well a range of characteristics of the protected areas and surrounding communities explain variation in volunteering effort. Protected areas that are larger have been protected for longer and that are located near to denser conurbations experience greater volunteering effort. Together these factors explain 38% of the observed variation in volunteering effort across protected areas.

Highlights

The expansion of protected area networks is limited by costs of setting up and managing sites in line with conservation objectives
We examine variation in volunteering effort across a set of small protected areas in Yorkshire, UK (Fig. 1) that are managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (YWT)
The costsharing contribution of volunteer labor was around 16% of overall site management costs, exceeding the value of paid staff time spent in managing sites

Summary

Introduction

The expansion of protected area networks is limited by costs of setting up and managing sites in line with conservation objectives. Management costs of protected areas can be substantial, potentially exceeding the cost of acquiring sites to begin with when funded on an endowment basis [1]. Of these management costs, paid staff time is the largest cost item on many protected areas. Conservation organizations can offset management costs by relying on volunteer labor for some aspects of protected area management. Volunteers are often involved in monitoring and research [2], [3], [4] habitat management [5], control of invasive species [6], and activities related to protected area establishment [7]. The cost-sharing contribution made by volunteers sometimes greatly exceeds actual expenditures on particular conservation activities [8], [9]

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