Conservation Decisions: Designing, Financing and Fundraising for Protected Areas

Establishing protection for conservation is a complicated process that involves many critical decisions, from spatial prioritization to garnering the necessary financial support to complete a project. In my research, I address questions that inform various components of this process. First, I ask questions about protected area design using a case study of a large reef system in Australia. I find that simple design rules can facilitate the pursuit of conservation and extractive management goals. Second, I address questions about costs incurred by the financing of new protection. I establish a unique dataset of projects financed by a conservation non-profit through an internal revolving loan. Using this loan data, I examine correlates of loan default which impacts both the long-term success of the defaulted conservation land deal, and the ability of that organization to pursue future land acquisition deals. Last, I partner with a large conservation non-profit to identify predictors of philanthropic giving to the organization. By investigating a finely resolved national dataset, I reveal several correlates of conservation giving, and identify regions where new fundraising techniques could greatly augment available resources for conservation action.