Developing a nature recovery network using systematic conservation planning

Abstract

Conservation area networks in most countries are fragmented and inadequate. To tackle this in England, government policies are encouraging stakeholders to create local‐level nature recovery networks. Here, we describe work led by a wildlife organization that used the systematic conservation planning approach to identify a nature recovery network for three English counties and select focal areas within it where they will focus their work. The network was based on identifying core zones to maintain current biodiversity and recovery zones for habitat restoration, meeting area‐based targets for 50 priority habitat, landscape, landcover, and ecosystem service types. It included the existing designated sites for conservation, which cover 6.05% of the study site, and identified an additional 11.6% of land as core zones and 18% as recovery zones, reflecting the organization's call for 30% of England to be conserved and connected by 2030. We found that systematic conservation planning worked well in this context, identifying a connected, adequate, representative, and efficient network and producing transparent and repeatable results. The analysis also highlighted the pressing need for government agencies to provide national‐level guidance and datasets for setting targets and including species data in spatial planning, creating a national framework to inform local action.

Improving the ecological outcomes of compensatory conservation by addressing governance gaps: a case study of Biodiversity Net Gain in England

“…If these on-site units which risk being unenforceable were instead provided via off-site biodiversity offsets, the total area of offsetting required to deliver BNG could rise by a factor of four, drawing substantially more investment into delivering biodiversity gains on private land via the market for biodiversity units. If these investments were directed towards priority habitat landscapes within the LPAs proposed Local Nature Recovery Networks (Smith et al 2022), the potential biodiversity benefits could be further enhanced by improving ecological characteristics, such as connectivity, which are poorly addressed in the Metric.…”

“…A recent government report suggested that once BNG becomes mandatory, up to 50% of all of the biodiversity units delivered by the policy would be from off-site offsets (EFTEC 2021). As a result, BNG has been referenced as a potentially important revenue stream for funding the implementation of England's proposed new Local Nature Recovery Strategies (Smith et al 2022) -although it should be noted that biodiversity compensation is a defensive expenditure (i.e. making up for an equal and opposite loss elsewhere) and so these investments are not seeking to improve the state of England's nature, but merely to prevent ongoing declines from development.…”

Achieving biodiversity net gain by addressing governance gaps underpinning ecological compensation policies

“…If on‐site units at risk of being unenforced were instead provided off‐site, the total area of offsetting required to deliver BNG could rise by a factor of 4, drawing substantially more investment into delivering biodiversity gains on private land via the market for biodiversity units. If these investments were directed toward priority habitat landscapes in the LPAs proposed “local nature recovery networks” (Smith et al., 2022), the potential biodiversity benefits could be further enhanced by improving ecological characteristics, such as connectivity, which are poorly addressed in the BNG metric. A challenge to increasing off‐site gains, however, is locating areas where gains can be achieved by creating or enhancing the habitat types.…”

“…It has been suggested that once BNG becomes mandatory, up to 50% of all biodiversity units delivered by the policy would be off‐site (EFTEC, 2021). Thus, the BNG policy could be an important revenue stream for funding the implementation of England's proposed new Local Nature Recovery Strategies (Smith et al., 2022). However, biodiversity compensation is a defensive expenditure (i.e., making up for an equal and opposite loss elsewhere), so these investments are not made to improve the state of nature, but to prevent ongoing biodiversity declines and compensate for biodiversity losses resulting from development.…”

Assembly processes inferred from eDNA surveys of a pond metacommunity are consistent with known species ecologies

“…Granular data on species distributions also serve as input for systematic conservation planning. A recent attempt to carry out a systematic conservation plan in southern England was forced to use habitat classes rather than species data because most English species records are restricted to urban and protected areas (Smith et al 2021). award 2025118.…”