A framework for developing marked-based policies to further biodiversity on non-industrial private forests (NIPF)

With the increasing concerns for healthy forests and enhanced habitat for wildlife, private landowner involvement has become a critical component of biodiversity conservation in the US. Since biodiversity conservation is largely a public good, landowners have little incentive to promote it at their own cost. Strategies to develop socially optimal policies for biodiversity conservation should however consider three aspects—identifying forest practices that best promote habitat for a wide range of species at landscape level, estimating the costs associated with adoption of identified practices, and assessing the adoption potential of the identified practices among landowners. In this paper, we developed a framework to achieve these three tasks, applying an analytical hierarchy process, a dynamic optimization model, and an attribute based contingent valuation technique, respectively. The framework was applied to the context of enhancing habitat for biodiversity on private forests in Florida.