Establishing a scalable approach for understanding landowner engagement opportunities.

How best to engage private landowners is a common question and an important one to answer. A collaborative project between Mississippi State and Duke Universities is developing an approach to identify effective landowner engagement strategies for promoting and sustaining ecosystem services (e.g., clean water, wildlife habitat, recreation) among farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners. As part of that project, we will develop the approach in the Southeastern United States through a focused case in three major habitat types (bottomland hardwoods, open pine stands, and grasslands) in the Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks (GCPO) Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) territory. We will present on initial results from three activities that will ultimately inform the design of the formal survey instrument, including: 1) Qualitative interviews to inform subsequent data collection and analyses; 2) A narrative mapping exercise connecting desired ecological conditions to the ecological benefits and services provided by these conditions and how best to manage for them; and 3) An assessment of the attributes of existing conservation and land management programs to identify preferred means of service delivery. The resulting survey instrument is intended to examine stakeholders’ willingness to engage and be compensated for ecosystem benefits and services they provide, and determine best communication pathways and program characteristics to achieve conservation goals desired by agencies and stakeholders alike. Such information is essential for a comprehensive understanding of the scale of action and resources needed to achieve conservation and cultural benefits in the GCPO LCC region, as well as for guiding policy development.