Incentives for biodiversity conservation beyond the best management practices: are forestland owners interested?

With the growing recognition of the role of environmental services rendered by private lands, landowner involvement has become a critical component of landscape-level strategies to conserve biodiversity. In this paper, we examine the willingness of private forest owners to participate in a conservation program that requires adopting management regimes beyond the existing regulations for silvicultural best management practices. Results from a multinomial logit model indicate both program attributes and landowner characteristics significantly influencing participation. While the mean incentive payment necessary to induce participation is $95.54 per ha per year, this amount varied among respondents with different forest ownership objectives.