Conservation in Practice Economics and Land-Use Change in Prioritizing Private Land Conservation DAVID NEWBURN, ∗ ‡ SARAH REED,† PETER BERCK, ∗ AND ADINA MERENLENDER† ∗ Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 207 Giannini Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3310, U.S.A. †Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, 151 Mulford Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3110, U.S.A. Abstract: Incentive-based strategies such as conservation easements and short-term management agreements are popular tools for conserving biodiversity on private lands. Billions of dollars are spent by government and private conservation organizations to support land conservation. Although much of conservation biology focuses on reserve design, these methods are often ineffective at optimizing the protection of biological benefits for conservation programs. Our review of the recent literature on protected-area planning identifies some of the reasons why. We analyzed the site-selection process according to three important components: biological benefits, land costs, and likelihood of land-use change. We compared our benefit-loss-cost targeting approach with more conventional strategies that omit or inadequately address either land costs or likelihood of land-use change. Our proposed strategy aims to minimize the expected loss in biological benefit due to future land-use conversion while considering the full or partial costs of land acquisition. The implicit positive correlation between the likelihood of land-use conversion and cost of land protection means high-vulnerability sites with suitable land quality are typically more expensive than low-vulnerability sites with poor land quality. Therefore, land-use change and land costs need to be addressed jointly to improve spatial targeting strategies for land conservation. This approach can be extended effectively to land trusts and other institutions implementing conservation programs. Key Words: conservation easements, land economics, land-use change, protected-area planning, reserve design, spatial models Econom´ ıa y Cambio en el Uso de Suelo en la Priorizaci´ on de la Conservaci´ on de Tierras Privadas Resumen: Las estrategias basadas en incentivos, como los derechos de conservaci´ on y los acuerdos de manejo a corto plazo, son herramientas populares para conservar la biodiversidad en tierras privadas. Las organizaciones conservacionistas gubernamentales y privadas gastan billones de d´ olares para financiar la conservaci´ on. Aunque la mayor parte de la biolog´ ıa de la conservaci´ on se centra en el dise˜ no de reservas, estos m´ etodos a menudo no son efectivos para la ´ optima protecci´ on de los beneficios biol´ ogicos de los programas de conservaci´ on. Nuestra revisi´ on de la literatura reciente sobre planificaci´ on de ´ areas protegidas identifica algunas de las razones de lo anterior. Analizamos los procesos de selecci´ on de sitios en funci´ on de tres compo- nentes importantes: beneficios biol´ ogicos, costo de las tierras y la probabilidad de cambio en el uso de suelo. Comparamos nuestro enfoque en el beneficio-p´ erdida-costo con m´ etodos m´ as tradicionales que omiten, o abor- dan inadecuadamente, el costo de las tierras y/o la probabilidad de cambio en el uso de suelo. La estrategia que proponemos trata de minimizar la p´ erdida esperada del beneficio biol´ ogico debido a la conversi´ on del uso de suelo en el futuro al tiempo que considera los costos parciales o totales de la adquisici´ on de tierras. La correlaci´ on positiva impl´ ıcita entre la probabilidad de conversi´ on en el uso de suelo y el costo de la protecci´ on de tierras significa que los stios altamente vulnerables con tierras de buena calidad t´ ıpicamente son mas caros que los sitios de baja vulnerabilidad con tierras de baja calidad. Por lo tanto, se requiere que el cambio en ‡email dnewburn@nature.berkeley.edu Paper received April 12, 2004; revised manuscript accepted November 3, 2004. 1411 Conservation Biology 1411–1420 C 2005 Society for Conservation Biology DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00199.x