INTRO:
By analysing three alternative scenarios for the peatland conservation network expansion in Finland, this manuscript addresses a key topic in conservation science. The author found that a scenario where landowners partial acceptance is taken into account in biodiversity prioritization enables protection of practically as much as biodiversity as forced protection (most probably reducing social conflict). However, they showed that only considering voluntary conservation might not be enough to protect the most valuable areas. Therefore they suggest a mixed approach both, considering landowners' opinions and forced conservation regardless landowners' opinion in those high quality propriety areas without appropriate substitute.
MERITS: In my opinion, one of the strengths of this work is to combine biodiversity data (biodiversity irreplaceability) and social inputs (landowner's resistance) to develop a special prioritization analyses. I think that is especially remarkable that the authors used a continuous variable to reflect landowners' resistance in one of the scenarios. This is very important, because it offers a way to recognize the complexities of landowners opinions in the analyses, and not only to simplify their opinion in opposed or not.
The analysis of the scenarios, allows them to evaluate different alternatives, and to come up with an alternative strategy to expand the conservation areas.
The methodology proposed has the potential to be applied in different context to identify opportunities to conserve, promote voluntary private land conservation, and to decrease conflicts in the territory.
CRITIQUE: Considering that this is an abstract, I found no weakness in the manuscript.
DISCUSSION: I consider that this work is very interesting and suitable for the ECCB 2018, as the ECCB focuses on conservation and sustainable management, in the context of planetary wellbeing. It contributes to the discussion on how to efficiently expand existing protected areas, taking into account not only biodiversity features, but also a social perspective. This is also crucial to address the Aichi target 11. It is also very important, as it propose a way to plan for both voluntary and involuntary private land conservation strategies.
This study remarks the importance of taking into account a social perspective in spatial conservation planning. It offers an approach that can be replicated in other territories, and the results can be easily communicated to decision makers. Based in my experience working with voluntary land conservation, I agree with the authors' suggestion that it could be fruitful to incorporate landowners' opinion from the beginning of the planning process.
The authors proposes that when high quality substitute areas do not exist, the protection of areas taking in account only landowners' opinion is not enough. I think, in future studies, they could include deeper analysis of landowner's opinions, especially the ones that are opposed. This could allow to identify new opportunities and alternative strategies to increase landowner willingness to implement conservation actions.
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INTRO: The authors conducted different spatial prioritization analysis using alternative scenarios to assess the potential benefits of voluntary conservation (total and partial acceptance) and forced protection on peatland biodiversity representation under the Finnish Peatland Conservation Programme. They found that a strategy that only involves those landowners that are committed with conservation (i.e. total acceptance) might not be enough to represent biodiversity. However considering landowners' partial acceptance could represent almost as much biodiversity as a forced protection strategy, presumably reducing social conflict. Nevertheless, the authors found that the consideration of landowners' partial acceptance would not be enough when high quality areas substitutes do not exist. The main results thus showed that: i- considering landowners' opinions and resistance does not imply a major biodiversity representation decline, if they are integrated from the beginning of the planning process, ii- to adequately represent the most ecologically valuable areas voluntary conservation should be combined with an involuntary strategy to secure their protection.
MERITS: The manuscript addresses a very important topic in conservation science, it is very well written and it is suitable for the ECCB 2018 focus. Different voluntary private land conservation strategies are being promoted worldwide to complement protected areas. The literature shows that voluntary conservation has the potential to reduce social conflict, to increase the area under protection and the ecological and socio-economic connectivity, among other benefits. However, the evidence on the impact of voluntary strategies on biodiversity representation is less clear. This manuscript addresses this issue by analysing the potential contribution of different voluntary and involuntary policy options to peatland biodiversity representation.
In my opinion, the methodology is clear and appropriate to address the research question. The implementation of conservation actions on private land depends mostly on landowners' willingness to collaborate. Therefore, the inclusion of social information along with biodiversity features in the spatial conservation prioritization is one of the manuscript strengths. In addition, they considered a gradient of landowners' acceptance, which is appropriate to represent the complexity behind landowners' decisions, which might go beyond the simple accept or not.
Another interesting aspect of the manuscript is that, in my opinion, the authors chose an appropriate case study to address the research question. The Finnish Peatland Conservation Programme is interesting from the policy perspective because it was originally planned to be implemented as an involuntary strategy (i.e. expropriations) and then changed to be a voluntary conservation program.
Finally, the results are clear and have important policy implications, both for Finland and for other countries that are developing their private land conservation strategies.
CRITIQUE: I see no problems or weakness in the manuscript.
DISCUSSION: The success of private land conservation strategies can be quite context dependent because they need to address complex social, economic, legal and ecological issues. However, in my opinion both the approach and the results of this study are interesting to inform policy-making not only in Finland but also in other countries that need to develop private land conservation policies.
The authors showed that there is no single best strategy to adequately represent peatlands biodiversity in Finland. However, they found that a mixed strategy, both promoting voluntary conservation and implementing forced protection to conserve those irreplaceable high quality areas, would be an appropriate strategy to achieve peatland biodiversity representation targets.
Beyond the abstract, I would be interested to listen in the presentation more about how the authors classified landowners' resistance in order to increase the replicability of the approach. It would be also interesting to discuss about the management implications of the different scenarios, beyond representation and the level of legal protection.