Print PageConservation planning must consider economic costs of conservation actions alongside their biodiversity benefits. For example, when deciding whether to accept a donation of a protected area a conservation group must evaluate whether an adequate endowment is available to support future management of the property. Opportunities for collaborating with others to share the cost burden of protected areas are commonly sought in conservation.
Site management costs comprise a significant component of the overall costs of protected areas, often surpassing acquisition costs when evaluated on an endowment basis. Of those site management costs, the most expensive budget line is often paid staff time. Conservation groups may be able to reduce this cost component by relying in part on volunteer labor. The extent of volunteering provides one indicator of community support for nearby protected areas.
We administered questionnaires to site managers and conservation volunteers to examine spatial variation in volunteering effort across 59 small protected areas in Yorkshire, UK, managed by a regional land trust, the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. We used multiple regression to identify a parsimonious set of models explaining spatial variation in volunteering effort. The models include predictor variables that describe characteristics of the protected areas and their surrounding communities.
Results/Conclusions
We are able to explain around 40% of the variation in volunteering effort. More volunteer labor is available on larger sites that have been protected areas for longer and have larger population densities nearby. The relationship of volunteer labor with site area appears to be convex in contrast to the concave relationship characterizing overall management costs. Interestingly, volunteer effort is positively correlated with management costs suggesting that the two are complements not substitutes as might have been expected.
