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Protected areas have long been the leading strategy to combat habitat fragmentation. However, studies have shown that this traditional approach can create habitat islands where populations are isolated, leading to their eventual extinction. As a result, conservation strategies have shifted to include more landscape-focused methods, including conservation corridors and ecological networks. However, what is not yet known is the extent to which South Africa's legislative and policy frameworks support this move. We identified and reviewed legislation and policies on conservation and protected areas in South Africa between 1976 to 2021 and outlined their shortcomings regarding a shift towards landscape-focused initiatives. None of the seven acts reviewed describe, protect, or enforce progressive landscape-based conservation methods. South Africa's environmental legislation is embedded in establishing and creating traditional protected areas while disregarding other methods. Moreover, the non-statutory policies reviewed were monotonous and had a limited scope that failed to provide an integrated and coordinated approach to conservation. Despite the plethora of protected area legislation and policies, South Africa's conservation approaches remain uninspiring and steadfast in traditional methods and have failed to evolve in 45 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Recent studies carried out by landscape and urban ecologists have shown that habitat fragmentation has negative environmental effects and is accountable for the loss of biodiversity. The development and extension of road infrastructure to support economic growth, the urbanization and the land-use changes are major drivers of habitat fragmentation. Planners have attempted to develop tools for restoring connectivity and stopping biodiversity loss at the landscape scale and which can be applied at the urban scale, too. The study fills in the gap by developing a methodology for identifying the ecological corridors of a Romanian large carnivore (brown bear) in the Romanian Carpathian Mountains at several spatial scales. The methodology relies on geospatial data; this is equally its most important advantage and challenge. Our findings suggest that the implementation of ecological corridors in current planning practice must be completed cautiously, provided the possible restrictions are imposed on economic activities by plans, and highlight the importance of field data in increasing the scientific soundness of the results. In addition, the findings show the need to interconnect spatial planning policies with environmental policies by improving the actual legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a key threat to biodiversity. To conserve species under climate change, ecologists and conservation scientists suggest 2 main conservation strategies regarding land use: supporting species' range shifts to enable it to follow its climatic requirements by creating migration pathways, such as corridors and stepping stones, and conserving climate refugia (i.e., existing habitat areas that are somewhat buffered from climate change). The policy instruments that could be used to implement these conservation strategies have yet to be evaluated comprehensively from an economic perspective. The economic analyses of environmental policy instruments are often based on ecological effectiveness and cost‐effectiveness criteria. We adapted these general criteria to evaluate policy instruments for species' conservation under climate change and applied them to a conceptual analysis of land purchases, offsets, and conservation payments. Depending on whether the strategy supporting species' range shifts or conserving climate refugia is selected, the evaluation of the policy instruments differed substantially. For example, to ensure ecological effectiveness, habitat persistence over time was especially important for climate refugia and was best achieved by a land‐purchase policy instrument. In contrast, for the strategy supporting range shifts to be ecologically effective, a high degree of flexibility in the location of conserved sites was required to ensure that new habitat sites can be created in the species' new range. Offset programs were best suited for that because the location of conservation sites can be chosen comparatively freely and may also be adapted over time. Article impact statement: Evaluation of policy instruments for species conservation under climate change should include both ecological and economic criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Creating landscapes with connectivity is vital for protecting biodiversity and meeting the environmental targets embedded in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with connectivity specifically mentioned in Target 11 of the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi Targets. Costa Rica created the National Biological Corridor Program (NBCP) in 2006 to enhance connectivity among protected areas. Targeted investments of payments for environmental services (PES) are the main tools used within the designated biological corridors. We conducted spatially explicit analyses to determine whether Costa Rica's NBCP, using PES, enhanced landscape connectivity within the Paso de las Nubes Biological Corridor. We conducted landscape modelling in order to determine the connectivity held within PES's properties by developing connectivity resistance surfaces and electrical current models. The results indicate that PES properties established after the NBCP contributed more to areas with intermediate values of connectivity and less to areas with high connectivity values as compared to properties before the NBCP. Although overall connectivity within the corridor has decreased since NBCP establishment, our results confirm the importance of PES properties for landscape connectivity, but emphasize the need for spatially targeted PES in order to improve viable paths of landscape connectivity among protected areas. Future targeted PES investments could contribute greatly to meeting connectivity goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Papua hosts a 4000-km highway for national economic and social integration. • This 'development corridor' is shifting conservation and development dynamics. • Peatland conservation, customary land rights, and forest integrity are affected. • Gubernatorial planning intervention is an interim measure prior to planning reform. Abstract The island of New Guinea harbours one of the world's largest tracts of intact tropical forest, with 41% of its land area in Indonesian Papua (Papua and Papua Barat Provinces). Within Papua, the advent of a 4000-km 'development corridor' reflects a national agenda promoting primary-resource extraction and economic integration. Papua, a resource frontier containing vast forest and mineral resources, increasingly exhibits new conservation and development dynamics suggestive of the earlier frontier development phases of other Indonesian regions. Local environmental and social considerations have been discounted in the headlong rush to establish the corridor and secure access to natural resources. Peatland and forest conversion are increasingly extensive within the epicentres of economic development. Deforestation frontiers are emerging along parts of the expanding development corridor, including within the Lorentz World Heritage Site. Customary land rights for Papua's indigenous people remain an afterthought to resource development, fomenting conditions contrary to conservation and sustainable development. A centralised development agenda within Indonesia underlies virtually all of these changes. We recommend specific actions to address the environmental, economic, and socio-political challenges of frontier development along the Papuan corridor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights from the article: Sustainable cities in the future will depend on urban green infrastructure and its ecological functions (Mell [9]; Breuste et al. [1]). Controversy on whether or not to harmonize the benefits from traditional gray infrastructure and those multipleecological functions from green infrastructure remain in the planning literature (Tiwary and Kumar [14]). Novel assessment methods for the urban green infrastructure are emerging that depend on the multiple ecological functions (Watts et al. [16]). Furthermore, advancement in the assessment methodology is relevant in terms of monitoring; new data sets support new assessment results and more effective planning implications on the problem faced.

Establishing national corridors have been identified as a policy priority for environmental and biodiversity conservation in many parts of the world. We explore the performance of a combinatorial landscape auction design to establish environmental corridors using an agent based simulation model. This modelling technique is highly flexible in modelling decision making processes involving heterogeneous landholders. Such structures allow landholders the opportunity to submit joint bids and, as such, share in the benefits that synergies across the landscape provide. The contribution of the paper is threefold. First, we compare spatial and non-spatial project selection to observe whether it is possible to achieve corridor outcomes with a non-spatially targeted project selection mechanism? We observe that while a corridor project selection mechanism increases the procurement cost, such selection mechanisms are necessary for spatially targeted objectives. Second, we study the effect of allowing agents to form coalitions and submit joint bids. We find evidence that joint bidding substantially increased procurement costs especially when the agency's target was to secure environmental corridors. Third, we study the combined effect of off-site synergies and joint bidding. We observe that relative benefits from off-site synergy are higher in spatial targeting programs compared to non-corridor targeting programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] U.S. National Park Service (NPS) policy statements and activity are reviewed on moderating the affects of climate change on park biota. [•] Abundant diverse agency activity is underway but the stated need for land use planning outside parks is scare in official NPS policy documents. [•] Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of the Interior has publicly acknowledged that habitat corridors will be needed to allow climate stressed animals to disperse. [•] One scientific stumbing block is a controversial and inadequate research literature for locating and designing habitat corridors. [•] A major planning impediment is the need for better incentives or enforcement tools to encourage private land owners to participate in regional land preservation goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses U.S. environmental policy of the administration of Barack Obama with a focus on political support for Landscape Conservation Cooperatives, Bureau of Land Management Rapid Ecological Assessments, and America’s Great Outdoors Initiative. Other legislation discussed include Protecting Wildlife Migration Corridors and Crucial Wildlife Habitat in the West, the National Forest Planning Rule and the Transportation Bill.

In policy analysis, studies on policy termination are rare. This article offers such a study. It presents the story of how, despite attempts by the government to terminate it, Dutch nature policy on ecological corridors continued to be implemented by regional governments and in the field. A case analysis is presented that integrates theories and insights not only from the termination literature but also from the literature on implementation. The different factors identified in the literature that enable or constrain implementation and termination have served as a basis for developing possible explanations of the case study. They cannot, however, serve as generic theories with predictive power. Policy termination as well as policy implementation are highly contextual processes and the question which factors will enable or constrain policy termination and implementation can only be answered on a case by case basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACTTraditional grazing grounds near Amboseli National Park (Kenya) are being rapidly converted to cropland ? a process that closes important wildlife corridors. We use a spatially explicit simulation model that integrates ecosystem dynamics and pastoral decision-making to explore the scope for introducing a ?payments for ecosystem services? scheme to compensate pastoralists for spillover benefits associated with forms of land use that are compatible with wildlife conservation. Our break-even cost analysis suggests that the benefits of such a scheme likely exceed its costs for a large part of the study area, but that ?leakage effects? through excessive stocking rates warrant close scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]