Conservation planning in the west, problems, new strategies and entrenched obstacles

The United States is often considered the progenitor of conservation planning in the world, the first to establish a vast public domain, for example. But with continued population growth, conservation planning on private lands—rural and at the urban fringe—continues to be a substantial challenge due to a tradition of local home rule in land use planning and strong private property protection afforded by the US Constitution. New “bottom-up” collaborative approaches, as well as other innovative strategies seem to be emerging. How effective these will be given pressures for growth and high property values remain to be seen without a rethinking of ideas of nature, a rebalancing of the role of property in American local fiscal regimes, and of private property rights.