Conservation development: a win for landowners & biodiversity?
Conservation development is an approach to the design, construction and stewardship of a development that achieves functional protection of natural resources while also providing social and economic benefits to human communities. Such projects have been heralded as an environmentally friendly alternative to exurban sprawl as well as a mechanism for conservation finance. Yet although conservation development has been in use for more than three decades and continue to grow in popularity, little is known about whether conservation objectives have been achieved. Dr. Sarah Reed and I co-direct a Conservation Development working group housed at CSUs School of Global Environmental Sustainability (www.cd.colostate.edu). Recent articles with graduate students Cooper Farr, Erica Goad and undergraduate Adam Miller have appeared in Ecological Applications, Biological Conservation and the Wilson Journal of Ornithology.