The potential for voluntary instruments to achieve conservation planning goals: the case of conservancies in South Africa L inda D ownsborough ,C harlie M.S hackleton and A ndrew T.K night Abstract Spatial prioritizations and gap analyses are in- creasingly undertaken to allocate conservation resources. Most spatial prioritizations are conducted without speci- fying the conservation instruments to be implemented and gap analyses typically assess formally protected areas but increasingly include private land conservation instruments. We examine conservancies to see if these voluntary instru- ments contribute towards achieving goals of South African conservation planning initiatives. We conducted a nationwide survey and interviews with conservancy members in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape. Conservancies have potential for assisting South Africa to achieve conservation planning goals at national and local scales but their inclusion in spatial prioritizations and gap analyses predicates improved pro- tection for nature, operational refinement and increased support. We sound a warning to conservation planning initiatives that incorporate voluntary instruments on private land, and present recommendations for strengthening such instruments to make them more effective. Our findings may assist conservation planners elsewhere to design more effec- tive conservation planning initiatives focused on private land. Keywords Conservancy, community conservation, Eastern Cape, effectiveness, Gauteng, off-reserve conservation, optimal instrument mix Introduction T he rate and extent of decline of nature through habitat transformation, overharvesting and invasive alien spe- cies is of global concern. Protected areas represent the cornerstone of nature conservation efforts, aiming to en- sure the persistence of species, habitats and environmental processes (Margules & Pressey, 2000). The IUCN protected area categories span a spectrum from closed access to multiple uses (Anon., 2002). This classification recognizes that comprehensively achieving conservation goals will not be solely possible through formally protected areas but will require property rights-based instruments where conserva- tion is mainstreamed into production activities on private land (Knight, 1999). Given the ad hoc history of protected area establishment targeting economically worthless lands (Pressey, 1994), a large proportion of high conservation value areas are now located on privately-owned lands outside protected areas (Ferrier et al., 2004), many of which face considerable pressure from destructive activi- ties. Targeting conservation efforts on private land is therefore a priority for many conservation planning initia- tives (Margules & Pressey, 2000). Conservation agencies increasingly apply computer-based techniques to identify efficient and representative networks of candidate protected areas (Pressey, 2002). Quantitative targets are applied to determine the extent to which existing protected areas achieve conservation targets (e.g. gap anal- yses) and/or to identify efficient, cost-effective additions to protected area networks (Margules & Pressey, 2000). Although these approaches have focused primarily on formally protected areas, they are increasingly including a range of private land instruments (von Hase et al., 2003; Crossman & Bryan, 2006; Wilson et al., 2007). Compared to formally protected areas, private land instruments allow a balance between conservation and pro- duction (Anon., 2002), and are more cost effective (Pence et al., 2003) and socially acceptable (Western et al., 1994). They present opportunities for engaging and educating civil society, reduce opportunity costs of conservation, and are increasingly included in gap analyses and spatial prioritiza- tions (Rouget et al., 2006). Private land instruments may be included in gap analyses as they can produce substantial increases in reported conservation effectiveness when conservation plans are evaluated using simplistic regional statistics such as total extent, or number of existing or proposed protected areas (Driver et al., 2005; Fishburn et al., 2009; Gallo et al., 2009). These quantitative criteria, however, are widely regarded as insufficient for evaluating the effectiveness of protected area networks (Pressey & Taffs, 2001), as they make two flawed assumptions: (1) that the greater the extent of land under conservation manage- ment the more successful an initiative (Gallo et al., 2009), and (2) that management of these areas is sufficiently effective to ensure the persistence of nature. Performance evaluations of networks of private land instruments have not been widely undertaken (Langholz & LINDA DOWNSBOROUGH*, CHARLIE M. SHACKLETON (Corresponding author) and ANDREW T. KNIGHT y Department of Environmental Science, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. E-mail c.shackleton@ ru.ac.za *Current address: Monash University, Roodepoort, South Africa y Current address: Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology, Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa Received 25 January 2010. Revision requested 28 June 2010. Accepted 8 October 2010. ª 2011 Fauna & Flora International, Oryx, 45(3), 357–364 doi:10.1017/S0030605310001559