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Promoting wildlife habitat on working agricultural land is a growing conservation priority, and agri‐environment schemes are using payments for environmental services (PES) to reach these privately owned lands. PES can be ecologically effective, but also expensive, putting pressure on these schemes to be cost‐effective, maximizing the conservation value of their limited resources. This study assesses the cost‐effectiveness of four PES schemes in California that paid rice growers to provide temporary flood habitat on their working lands in support of shorebirds. It examines whether the schemes (1) paid for flood habitat only when needed (targeting); (2) paid for habitat that was actually delivered and would not otherwise be provided (additionality); (3) sacrificed as little habitat as possible when the habitat competed with production (ag/wildlife balance); and (4) fostered a commitment among growers to maintain the habitat after payments ended (permanence). Results show that the schemes fell short in each of the four goals, and they expose several factors that undermined their cost‐effectiveness. First, variable weather patterns altered the date in which the shorebird‐habitat gap emerged year‐to‐year, creating a dynamic and unpredictable target for the schemes to address. Second, growers' views on the compatibility of the flood habitat with their rice production varied widely and changed rapidly as the agricultural calendar progressed, making it a challenge to mitigate potential ag/wildlife conflicts. Third, water for flood habitat is expensive, and growers proved unwilling to shoulder that expense once payments ended. These results highlight the need for schemes to adopt design elements that can add flexibility, such as cancelation clauses, so that they can adjust to dynamic targets and adapt to changing ag/wildlife relationships. Results also suggest that PES schemes operating on working lands may require long‐term external support. That finding amplifies the imperative that schemes use their conservation resources cost‐effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined an agri-environment scheme employing payments for environmental services (PES) to promote conservation practices on working agricultural lands. Our goal was to identify key factors supporting (and impeding) participation and the adoption of 'best management practices' (BMPs), with a focus on wildlife practices. We used scheme-contract records and grower surveys to develop regression models analyzing each decision. Model predictors represented growers' ability and their willingness to participate and adopt BMPs. Results showed that external rewards alone promoted participation as well as the adoption of production-oriented BMPs, but both external incentives and internal, non-economic motivations were critical for wildlife practices. These results affirm the view that PES-based incentives are necessary, but insufficient for wildlife-practice adoption. In addition, we add two wildlife-specific motivations to the conservation-adoption literature's typology: a sense of responsibility among hunters to steward wildlife, and a desire to foster a positive societal perception of farming through wildlife stewardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: To help mitigate large wetland losses in California, The Nature Conservancy launched a dynamic conservation incentive program to create temporary wetland habitats in harvested and fallow rice fields for shorebirds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. Farmers were invited to participate in a reverse auction bidding process and winning bids were selected based on their cost and potential to provide high quality shorebird habitat. This was done in 2014 and 2015, for separate enrollment periods that overlapped with spring and fall migration, both before and after the traditional post‐harvest flooding period. To assess the success of the program, we monitored shorebird use of fields that were enrolled (treatments), and others that were subject to typical rice farm management (controls). To put these observations in context, we used satellites to simultaneously monitor the extent of shallow‐water habitat across the ~215,000 ha of ricelands in the area. Results showed that providing habitat during migration, when it is typically unavailable in rice fields, yielded the largest average shorebird densities ever reported for agriculture in the region. Treatment fields had significantly greater shorebird density, richness and diversity than control fields in both spring and fall (especially September–early October, and late March–early April), but in fall the difference was greater. Shorebird responses to habitat provisioning, and regional habitat conditions, were variable from year to year, and highly dynamic within a given season. Overall, shorebirds densities were found to be negatively related to the total amount of flooded habitat in the rice landscape. Factors that affected habitat availability included allocation schedules of water deliveries from reservoirs, and rainfall patterns, both of which were influenced by drought. Collectively, these results suggest that appropriately managed agricultural lands have great potential to provide high value habitat for shorebirds during times of habitat deficit, including migration, and that fall may be a particularly impactful time to create additional habitat. Migratory species face great challenges due to the climate change, conversion of historical stopover sites, and other factors, but dynamic conservation programs offer promise that, at least in certain instances, their needs can still be met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Andapa region of northeast Madagascar, smallholders cultivating swidden hill rice ( tavy) for subsistence are pressing against neighboring nature reserves. A dominant policy approach to reducing this pressure requires that smallholders abandon tavy and purchase rice from proceeds obtained from their environmentally sustainable commercial crops, vanilla and coffee. Economic liberalization policies have succeeded in stimulating the expansion of these commercial crops, but have failed to reduce tavy production. We ask why this dual (subsistence and commercial) production system persists. We test two explanatory views: that either market imperfections deny farmers full entry into the market, or that internal production goals or socio-cultural norms create barriers to full market participation. Results support the latter view, although not for reasons that have been associated with this view in past studies. We propose a new factor that may serve as a barrier to full-market immersion among Andapa tavy farmers, the social relations of property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]