Prioritizing Conservation Easement Recruitment Efforts: A Policy-Informed Conservation Assessment of Private Land

In the United States, tax incentives combined with the ecological significance of private land are driving the expansion of conservation easements held by land trusts. This development suggests a need to further identify efficient methods for assessing the conservation value of private land. We collaborated with two land trusts on a conservation assessment of the Upper Oconee Watershed in northeastern Georgia. We identified nine landscape-level conservation features that were important to the land trusts’ missions. To weight the conservation features in the creation of a parcel-level index model, we used criteria from the Georgia Land Conservation Program. Out of 32,657 parcels analyzed, we identified 111 priority parcels that contain 2–15 percent of each conservation feature in the watershed. We recommended these priority parcels to the land trusts for use in their easement recruitment campaigns and conservation strategies.