Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, 61801, U.S.A.
The Nature Conservancy, 4245 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA, 22203, U.S.A.
Conserv Biol. 2016 Feb;30(1):206-15. doi: 10.1111/cobi.12608. Epub 2015 Oct 13.
Caught between ongoing habitat destruction and funding shortfalls, conservation organizations are using systematic planning approaches to identify places that offer the highest biodiversity return per dollar invested. However, available tools do not account for the landscape of funding for conservation or quantify the constraints this landscape imposes on conservation outcomes. Using state-level data on philanthropic giving to and investments in land conservation by a large nonprofit organization, we applied linear regression to evaluate whether the spatial distribution of conservation philanthropy better explained expenditures on conservation than maps of biodiversity priorities, which were derived from a planning process internal to the organization and return on investment (ROI) analyses based on data on species richness, land costs, and existing protected areas. Philanthropic fund raising accounted for considerably more spatial variation in conservation spending (r(2) = 0.64) than either of the 2 systematic conservation planning approaches (r(2) = 0.08-0.21). We used results of one of the ROI analyses to evaluate whether increases in flexibility to reallocate funding across space provides conservation gains. Small but plausible "tax" increments of 1-10% on states redistributed to the optimal funding allocation from the ROI analysis could result in gains in endemic species protected of 8.5-80.2%. When such increases in spatial flexibility are not possible, conservation organizations should seek to cultivate increased support for conservation in priority locations. We used lagged correlations of giving to and spending by the organization to evaluate whether investments in habitat protection stimulate future giving to conservation. The most common outcome at the state level was that conservation spending quarters correlated significantly and positively with lagged fund raising quarters. In effect, periods of high fund raising for biodiversity followed (rather than preceded) periods of high expenditure on land conservation projects, identifying one mechanism conservation organizations could explore to seed greater activity in priority locations. Our results demonstrate how limitations on the ability of conservation organizations to reallocate their funding across space can impede organizational effectiveness and elucidate ways conservation planning tools could be more useful if they quantified and incorporated these constraints.
在持续的栖息地破坏和资金短缺之间，保护组织正在使用系统规划方法来确定每投资一美元能获得最高生物多样性回报的地方。然而，现有的工具没有考虑到保护资金的景观，也没有量化这种景观对保护结果的限制。我们利用一个大型非营利组织的州级慈善捐赠和土地保护投资数据，应用线性回归来评估保护慈善事业的空间分布是否比组织内部规划过程中得出的生物多样性优先事项地图以及基于物种丰富度、土地成本和现有保护区数据的投资回报率 (ROI) 分析更能解释保护支出。慈善筹款解释了保护支出的空间变化（r²=0.64），而这两种系统保护规划方法（r²=0.08-0.21）都没有。我们使用其中一种 ROI 分析的结果来评估增加资金在空间上重新分配的灵活性是否可以带来保护收益。对从 ROI 分析中重新分配给最优资金分配的各州，进行 1-10%的小但合理的“税收”增量，可能会使受保护的特有物种增加 8.5-80.2%。当这种空间灵活性的增加不可能时，保护组织应该寻求在优先地点增加对保护的支持。我们利用组织的捐款和支出的滞后相关性来评估保护栖息地的投资是否会刺激未来对保护的捐款。在州一级最常见的结果是，保护支出季度与滞后的筹款季度显著正相关。实际上，生物多样性筹款的高峰期紧随（而不是先于）土地保护项目支出的高峰期，这确定了保护组织可以探索的一种机制，以在优先地点引发更大的活动。我们的结果表明，保护组织在空间上重新分配资金的能力受到限制如何会阻碍组织的有效性，并阐明保护规划工具如果能够量化和纳入这些限制，将如何更有用。
