An evaluation of environmental, institutional and socio-economic factors explaining successful conservation plan implementation in the north-central United States

Abstract Conservation plans are commonly used tools for prioritizing areas for protection, but plan implementation is often limited and rarely formally evaluated. Without evaluations of planning outcomes, it is difficult to justify expending resources to develop new plans and to adapt future plans so they are more likely to achieve desired conservation outcomes. We evaluated implementation of four conservation plans in Wisconsin, USA, by quantifying land protection within plan boundaries over time. We found that 44% of lands inside plans are currently protected, compared to 5% outside plans. We then asked which environmental, institutional, and socio-economic factors explained implementation of the most recent (2008) plan by the state natural resources agency. Institutional and environmental metrics related to agency policy and past actions explained 61% of implementation variability among individual priority areas within the plan: the agency having secured acquisition authority (a policy requirement) and subsequently successfully protected land in the priority area prior to the conservation plan being completed, and acquiring land near open water (a policy priority). Our findings suggest that implementation is possible under a wide variety of socio-economic settings and indicate that development of new conservation plans may not necessarily lead to action in new locations in the near term, but rather may facilitate action in locations where the institutional groundwork for action has already been laid. Considering institutional policies of active conservation partners in the development of future conservation plans can facilitate identification of priority areas that are more likely to correspond with on-the-ground implementation opportunities.