Abstract
Despite the recognised importance of private land for biodiversity conservation, there has been little research into systems of private protected areas at a country-wide level. Here I look at definitions, legislation, ownership, management approaches and effectiveness, distribution and incentives provided to private protected areas in Australia. The term ‘private protected areas’, although increasingly used, still suffers from a lack of a clear and concise definition in Australia. Australian states and territories have legislation enabling the application of conservation covenants over private land; covenants being the primary mechanism to secure conservation intent on the title of the land in perpetuity. If considering all ‘in perpetuity’ conservation covenants under a dedicated program to be private protected areas and land owned by non-government organisations and managed for the purpose of biodiversity conservation, there were approximately 5,000 terrestrial properties that could be considered private protected areas in Australia covering 8,913,000 ha as at September 2013. This comprises almost 4,900 conservation covenants covering over 4,450,000 ha and approximately 140 properties owned by private land trusts covering approximately 4,594,120 ha. Most conservation covenanting programs now seek to complement the comprehensiveness, adequacy and representativeness of the public reserve system, either stating so explicitly or by aiming to protect the highest priority ecosystems on private land. There are a range of incentives offered for private land conservation and requirements of owners of private protected areas to report on their activities vary in Australia. However, there are a number of key policy challenges that need to be addressed if private protected areas are to achieve their full potential in Australia, including managing broad-scale ecosystem processes, protection and tenure reform, improved financial incentives, and access to emerging ecosystem service markets.
Highlights
The commitment by most countries to expand the protected area estate in a representa tive and well-connected manner, as part of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Aichi Target 11, will require the inclusion of a range of protection mechanisms over a variety of tenures, including protected areas over private land (Woodley et al 2012)
I look at the development of the private protected area estate in Australia, which has seen a dramatic growth in area and number of properties permanently protected for nature conservation, but has received little attention in the literature
There is a variety of conservation covenanting mechanisms with supporting programs that currently exist in Australia
Summary
Academic editor: D. Saunders | Received 12 October 2014 | Accepted 15 January 2015 | Published 3 February 2015 http://zoobank.org/CE8F8BD2-FC3C-48CC-AE4F-4C0D44911B5D Citation: Fitzsimons JA (2015) Private protected areas in Australia: current status and future directions. Nature Conservation 10: 1–23. doi: 10.3897/natureconservation.10.8739
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