Policy Brief 2017 1 Supporting the long-term stewardship of privately protected areas Matthew Selinske, RMIT University Contact: matthew.selinske@rmit.edu.au Mathew Hardy, RMIT University Dr Ascelin Gordon, RMIT University and Dr Andrew Knight, Imperial College London ISSUE Globally, privately protected areas (PPAs) are an increasingly popular approach to long-term protection of biodiversity on privately owned lands. Currently, there are 14, 296 PPAs listed in the World Database on Protected Areas, covering 21,821 km 2 , across 25 countries (Bingham et al. 2017). PPAs provide multiple ecological, social and economic benefits to diverse range of stakeholders in across a range of contexts. These include supporting the desire of landowners to protect conservation values on their land, contributing to national conservation targets, and reducing financial costs of land management to governments. In addition, they provide opportunities to engage landowners to strengthen community social and conservation values through positive partnerships with governments, NGOs, and other groups. This policy brief explores the key drivers of landowner participation in PPA programs (i.e. covenants, easements, servitudes and other long- term agreements with individuals or groups of landowners) and the program mechanisms that maintain successive generations of landowners to be engaged and committed to long-term stewardship. It also considers the challenges faced by PPA programs in developing and maintaining strong collaborative arrangements between the stakeholders involved in these programs. POLICY IMPLICATIONS Three major human phenomena determine the long-term success of PPA programs. First, landowners are motivated to participate in PPA programs for multiple reasons that are both diverse and dynamic. Understanding and engaging these motivations is essential for effective recruitment of landowners into PPA programs. Second, landowner’s willingness to meet the requirements of property management agreements over long timeframes might change post- enrolment. This may result from personal, familial and/or social changes of circumstance. Third, maintaining successive landowners, both inter- generational within-family transfers, and new purchasers of in perpetuity agreements, committed to management agreements can be challenging given the inevitable turnover in ownership of privately-owned lands. These three phenomena are important considerations given the long time horizons of land management and the contributing human, social, economic and ecological values. The concept of intergenerational stewardship is a critical and hereto under-appreciated conceptual and operational dimension of effective PPA programs, and can assist in meeting these challenges. RESEARCH FINDINGS Landowner motivations and recruitment Research in Australia and South Africa shows that landowners choose to participate in PPA programs for a variety of reasons—primarily to secure conservation values, because of emotional attachment to places, and protection of their land in perpetuity. Additional reasons include altruism, spiritual values, and contributing to a cause of broader societal importance. Incentives for promoting stewardship Financial incentives are increasingly used to encourage landowner participation in PPA programs. Incentives can increase willingness-to- participate by compensating for the opportunity costs of permanent protection of land values, or reducing land management expenses (e.g. fencing, invasive species management). Whilst incentives