With parks and protected areas insufficient to sustain global biodiversity, the role of private land in biodiversity conservation is becoming increasingly significant. This paper reviews global voluntary and involuntary strategies for private land conservation. Involuntary strategies can achieve effective conservation outcomes, but often lack social acceptability. In contrast, voluntary strategies enjoy greater social acceptance but may not achieve sufficient uptake to have meaningful conservation objectives. Based on the review, we propose a classification system for private land conservation as a complement to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN's) classification of global protected areas. The classification system provides a framework for identifying and describing conservation strategies on private land on the dimension of tenure and security. It also identifies opportunities and vulnerabilities in achieving conservation on private land while emphasising the need for systematic data collection similar to IUCN's efforts for protected areas.

There is a pressing need for volunteer amateur naturalists to participate in data collection for biodiversity monitoring programmes in Europe. It is being addressed in some countries, but less so in others. This paper discusses the results from qualitative research using semi-structured interviews, focus groups and participant observation within nine Participatory Monitoring Network (PMN) organisations in six European countries. The paper examines the features that facilitate recruitment, retention and motivations of volunteers to participate in biodiversity monitoring, including the social and cultural milieus in which they operate. The paper concludes that volunteers place a high degree of significance on their social experience within PMNs. Successful creation and management of PMNs thus requires that similar levels of attention be paid to social aspects of the organisation as are paid to the generation and management of data.

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Despite the recent paradigmatic shift in conservation science, protected areas (PAs), which are associated with seminal conservation strategies, remain a key tool for achieving biodiversity conservation. Nevertheless, PAs' effectiveness as conservation measures is undermined by conflicts arising within their socio-ecological systems. Potential reasons for the negative impact of the conflicts include the tendency of researchers to emphasise managerial or behavioural aspects of conservation conflicts, while neglecting to develop theoretical foundations for conflict analysis. We aimed to critically review existing conceptual frameworks applied within the broadly defined field of conservation conflicts and to develop a new more comprehensive framework that better reflects contemporary identified challenges within nature conservation. We particularly proposed and emphasised the integration of a geographical perspective within existing interdisciplinary approaches for the application to PA settings. We systemised and unified conflict-related terminology, assessed the contributions and limitations of existing frameworks and identified critical gaps in the field. These gaps are: inadequate recognition of the spatial aspects of conflict analysis, a lack of consistency between individual-level and community-level frameworks and a lack of systematic linkages among the main structural attributes of conflicts, such as determinants, interests or types of conflicts. We systematically distinguished 26 conflict-related terms, including: conflict frames, images, orientations, factors, categories, issues, potential, or intensity. Our framework covers three major conflict components (determinants, dimensions, levels) and foregrounds the socio-psychological and spatial characteristics of PA conflicts, while enabling systemisation of existing conservation conflict typologies.

In spite of widespread support from most member countries’ societies for European Union policy, including support for the sustainable development idea, in many EU countries the levels of acceptance of new environmental protection programmes have been and, in particular in new member states, still are considerably low. The experience of the countries which were the first to implement union directives show that they cannot be effectively applied without widespread public participation. The goal of this study was, using the example of Poland, to assess public acceptance of the expansion of nature conservation in the context of sustainable development principles and to discover whether existing nature governance should be modified when establishing new protected areas. The increase in protected areas in Poland has become a hotbed of numerous conflicts. In spite of the generally favourable attitudes to nature which Polish people generally have, Natura 2000 is perceived as an unnecessary additional conservation tool. Both local authorities and communities residing in the Natura areas think that the programme is a hindrance, rather than a help in the economic development of municipalities or regions, as was initially supposed. This lack of acceptance results from many factors, mainly social, historic and economic. The implications of these findings for current approach to the nature governance in Poland are discussed.