Private lands conservation: A vision for the future

Agricultural production, including croplands, pasture, and timber, dominates private-land use and land cover across much of the contiguous lower 48 states. These private lands are essential to achieving the goals of national conservation initiatives such as the Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (bobwhite [Colinus virginianus]), Sage Grouse Initiative, and North American Waterfowl Management Plan. Effective conservation delivery in managed landscapes requires 1) an understanding of landowner priorities and ownership objectives, 2) knowledge of the economic and environmental costs and benefits of conservation, and 3) natural resource professionals who understand the business of agriculture and forestry as well as principles of habitat management and wildlife conservation. We make the case for a new vision of multifunctional working landscapes that include designed components of natural and seminatural noncrop perennial plant communities (wetlands, grasslands, riparian areas, field margins, pine [Pinus spp.] grasslands, savannas, etc.) embedded in a matrix of row-crop, pasture, rangeland, and forested working lands that produce sustainable food, fiber, and fuel. Producing sustainable, multifunctional landscapes will require effective conservation delivery that is intentional, objective-driven, targeted, science-based, and landscape scale. We contend that it will also require a new kind of natural resource professional. We consider the specific and novel skill sets that will be required among natural resource professionals to deliver conservation to private owners-producers of working lands. (c) 2019 The Wildlife Society.