Identifying synergies and differences in multistakeholder conservation priorities using participatory mapping interviews

Research

INTRODUCTION

Recognizing that human alteration of landscape structure, which has produced substantial effects at a global scale (Hoekstra et al. 2005), is shaped by spatially explicit values and opinions, strategies that integrate place-based perspectives of a wide array of stakeholders have become essential for effective landscape-scale conservation (Brown et al. 2019). Human activities have significantly altered global habitat in recent decades (Hansen et al. 2010), including the removal of 5% of global forest cover from 2000–2010 (Alroy 2017), leading to declines in forest-dependent wildlife (Butchart et al. 2010). In the Neotropical region, which contains the highest levels of global terrestrial biodiversity (Raven et al. 2020), 3.91 million hectares of forest were cleared annually from 2000–2010 (Achard et al. 2014), primarily for agricultural expansion (Graesser et al. 2015, Dang et al. 2019). Large-scale deforestation in the region has decreased forest area, reducing habitat for forest-dependent fauna (Donald and Evans 2006), and has fragmented many remaining forested areas (Powell et al. 2000, Moran et al. 2019), which can adversely affect forest-dependent wildlife by decreasing access to food resources, mating opportunities, and genetic diversity, while increasing predation (Donald and Evans 2006).

As part of the regional trend of broad-scale deforestation, Costa Rica lost approximately two-thirds of its forest cover between 1950 and 1988 (Sánchez-Azofeifa et al. 2001), primarily due to agricultural expansion (Donald and Evans 2006). However, it has experienced large-scale forest regeneration since the 1990s, resulting from the emergence of nature-based tourism and implementation of conservation-focused legislation (Calvo-Alvorado et al. 2009), which has led to the designation of 28% of the country’s landmass as protected areas, including 12% as national parks (Fig. 1; Evans 1999, Powell et al. 2000, Sánchez-Azofeifa et al. 2003). Thus, Costa Rica has developed a reputation as a model for successful conservation in the Neotropics (Evans 1999, Calvo-Alvorado et al. 2009). While deforestation within Costa Rican national parks is negligible, unprotected forests, which represent nearly half of the nation’s total forest cover (Moran et al. 2019), are highly fragmented (Powell et al. 2000) and subject to ongoing degradation and deforestation (Sánchez-Azofeifa et al. 2003). Deforestation in unprotected areas threatens to isolate national parks from one another (DeFries et al. 2005), reducing their effectiveness because individual reserves are usually too small to support viable populations, particularly for species with large home ranges, low population densities, or migratory behavior (DeClerck et al. 2010, Moran et al. 2019). Thus, management of landscapes surrounding reserves is critical for maintaining wildlife populations (Mannetti et al. 2019), and increasing forest connectivity has emerged as a conservation priority in Costa Rica.

Because the amount of additional land that can be set aside exclusively for biodiversity conservation is limited by human land use (Hoekstra et al. 2005), the focus of conservation action in Costa Rica has moved beyond protected areas into surrounding mixed-use landscapes to supplement and connect reserves (Vandermeer and Perfecto 2007, DeClerck et al. 2010, Allen 2015). To enhance forest connectivity between reserves, Costa Rica developed a network of 44 biological corridors in the 1990s (Fig. 1; Sánchez-Azofeifa et al. 2003, SINAC 2009). These biological corridors are relatively large (DeClerck et al. 2010) and consist of diversely managed, privately owned land, including protected areas, fragmented unprotected forest, agricultural operations, and sizeable towns (Fagan et al. 2013). Most of the Costa Rican biological corridors developed from grassroots initiatives, as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were able to capitalize on opportunities provided by the growth of the nature-based tourism industry (Newcomer at al. 2022). Corridors are managed by individual councils that must facilitate cooperation between myriad government agencies and NGOs with a goal of fostering effective participatory co-management (DeClerck et al. 2010). Conservation outcomes in Costa Rican biological corridors are particularly dependent upon stakeholder support because they are not legally protected areas and lack the legislative authority to regulate land management. Thus, to be effective, conservation within biological corridors requires collaboration with land managers and the integration of social and ecological management objectives through inclusive planning (Allen 2015), which can increase awareness, trust, and support for conservation objectives (Schusler et al. 2003, Treves et al. 2006, Morse 2012).

To determine the role of biological corridors in promoting stakeholder support for conservation in Costa Rica, most previous research has examined the attitudes of individual landowners toward conservation initiatives (Morse et al. 2009, Allen and Colson 2019) because most corridors are relatively new and have thus not produced tangible effects on forest cover (DeClerck et al. 2010). Economic incentives are the primary motivators for reforestation within corridors (Morse et al. 2013). However, support for payments for ecosystem services programs varies widely among corridors (Morse et al. 2009, 2013, Allen and Colson 2019), and the corridors have produced marginal conservation additionality (Brownson et al. 2020), have had limited success in changing landowner opinions (Newcomer at al. 2022), and are unlikely to provide enough value to ensure conservation success in the face of future socioeconomic changes (Calvo-Alvarado et al. 2009). Nature-based tourism, which offers opportunities for coupling conservation with livelihoods in Costa Rica, has garnered widespread support (Brownson et al. 2021), but relationships between nature-based tourism and forest regeneration are spatially variable due to economic drivers (Allen 2015). Thus, patterns of forest regeneration within biological corridors in Costa Rica have been shaped by the marginality of land, proximity to tourism infrastructure, and accessibility by conservation organizations. Therefore, reforestation is correlated with landscape features such as distance to protected areas, slope, distance to roads, and distance to streams (Allen 2015).

Patterns of forest regeneration vary within individual biological corridors (Allen and Padgett Vásquez 2017), indicating that they are also products of place-specific decisions (Stedman 2003). Therefore, a spatially explicit understanding of stakeholders’ landscape preferences is required (Brown 2004) because debates about landscape management often stem as much from meanings ascribed to specific places as from general attitudes toward management topics (Cheng et al. 2003). Therefore, it is useful to incorporate spatial tools in the conservation planning process to identify place-specific values, facilitate data visualization, identify trade-offs, and enable forecasting (Brown 2004, Duguma et al. 2022, White et al. 2022). Participatory mapping is an approach that allows participants to identify their preferences directly on a map of the landscape (Brown 2004). It complements expert-led conservation planning (Sieber 2006) by allowing stakeholder preferences to be visualized and directly compared with other spatial data (Bengston et al. 2004, Theobald et al. 2005, Duguma et al. 2022) to facilitate the identification of synergies, trade-offs, conflicts (Karimi et al. 2020), and knowledge gaps (Cox et al. 2019). Participatory mapping has been applied to a wide range of natural resource management topics, including wildlife conservation (Cox et al. 2014, Brown et al. 2019), landscape values (Brown 2004), development preferences (Nielsen-Pincus 2011), ecosystem services (Raymond et al. 2009, Cox et al. 2015), and vulnerability to landscape change (Morse et al. 2020). The participatory mapping approach offers flexibility in implementation methodology and types of data collected. However, the maps generated from quantitative studies show where participant preferences are located but often obscure information about why participants identified those locations (Sletto 2009). Coupling participatory mapping with qualitative data collection methods (e.g., semi-structured interviews) provides a framework to gain insight into the context that shapes participant preferences (Lowery and Morse 2013) and offers greater participant empowerment through increased opportunities to share their opinions (Sletto 2009, Cochrane and Corbett 2018).

Because Costa Rican biological corridors rely on support from diverse stakeholders with unique management preferences, participatory mapping offers a spatially explicit framework for identifying conservation preferences to visualize goals, synergies, and conflicts to facilitate collaborative planning, which has been identified as one of the top priorities for the Costa Rican biological corridor network (DeClerck et al. 2010). Despite the proliferation of conservation organizations operating within Costa Rican biological corridors, most research has focused on conservation motivations and preferences of individual landowners (Morse et al. 2013, Allen 2015, Brownson et al. 2021). However, organizations operate at broader spatial scales than individual landowners and can thus influence land management decisions across larger areas and shape corridor objectives while also representing the interests of stakeholder groups. Therefore, it is critical to understand how organizations’ management priorities align with corridor goals. Highlighting synergies and sources of conflict can help managers to develop more integrated plans with greater stakeholder involvement (Harvey et al. 2008, Calvo-Alvorado et al. 2009).

Objectives

The primary goal of this study was to use participatory mapping-based interviews to identify locations and spatial patterns of conservation priorities of organizations involved in land management operating within the upper Guacimal watershed, located within the Corredor Biológico Pájaro Campana (CBPC; Bellbird Biological Corridor) of northwestern Costa Rica. To understand the context for these spatial patterns, we integrated qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with quantitative spatial data to identify rationales for identifying certain places and to determine how organizations’ missions, land management practices, and constraints shape these preferences. We also assessed how organizations’ conservation priorities aligned with the goals of the CBPC by comparing the landscape characteristics of conservation priorities identified by participants to CBPC conservation goals. The primary objective of the CBPC is to increase downslope forest connectivity from the well-protected highlands (Welch et al. 2011). Because we expected that organizations would align their conservation priorities with CBPC goals, we expected organizations to prioritize: (1) middle elevations because they are downslope adjacent to highland protected areas; (2) upper elevations because they include the base of operations of most organizations and are thus more likely to be selected due to spatial discounting (Brown et al. 2020); (3) protected areas because they provide critical habitat and are the focus of current management efforts; (4) areas adjacent to intact forest to increase forest connectivity; and (5) areas near streams because the restoration of riparian buffers to protect water quality has been prioritized locally as a way to use ecosystem services to improve forest connectivity (Townsend and Masters 2015). We also hypothesized that the spatial distributions of stakeholder conservation priorities would differ based on the reasons given for prioritization.

METHODS

Study area

The study area comprised the 129 km² upper Guacimal watershed, which is located within the CBPC on the Pacific slope of northwestern Costa Rica (Fig. 1). The CBPC was conceived in 1992 (Welch et al. 2011, Newcomer et al. 2022) and formally established in 2007 with the formation of a local administrative council (SINAC 2009). It is designed to promote forest connectivity along an elevation gradient from highland cloud forests to coastal mangrove forests using the vulnerable Three-wattled Bellbird (Procnias tricarunculatus) as a flagship species (Welch et al. 2011, Newcomer et al. 2022). Within the CBPC, the upper Guacimal watershed extends from well-protected cloud forest at the continental divide to fragmented lowland tropical dry forest, including middle elevation seasonally dry Pacific slope forests, which are underrepresented in Costa Rica’s network of protected areas (Powell et al. 2000). The study area was restricted to the upper Guacimal watershed because climate, species composition, scale of agricultural operations, and conservation priorities differ significantly in the lower portion of the watershed. The study area is inhabited by approximately 5000 people (INEC 2011). Approximately 80% of the study area’s population is concentrated in the highland town of Santa Elena, and the remainder of the study area is a sparsely inhabited mosaic of small-scale agriculture, agrarian communities, and protected forest (Griffith and Peck 2000), including the renowned Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve (MVCFR), which is visited by > 100,000 people annually (Newcomer et al. 2022). Tourism has become the primary source of income for Santa Elena due to its proximity to the MVCFR, but the remainder of the study area primarily depends on agricultural production, particularly dairy cattle and coffee (Burlingame 2014). Because of its high number of endemic species and the growth of the nature-based tourism industry, the highland zone of the study area has a robust conservation history, beginning with establishment of the MVCFR in 1972 (Burlingame 2000), and is host to many local conservation organizations, whereas the middle and lower elevations contain fewer locally operating organizations.

Sample selection and interview protocol

We employed a case study approach (Creswell and Poth 2017) that mixed qualitative and quantitative spatial methods to understand conservation priorities and corridor goals within the CBPC. We interviewed key informants at organizations involved with land management, rather than individual landowners, because they have not been the focus of previous studies of conservation priorities in Costa Rica and operate at broader spatial scales than individuals and can thus influence land management decisions across larger areas. Between November 2017 and July 2018, we invited key informants from 24 organizations involved with a range of land management practices in the study area to participate in interviews. We conducted 20 semi-structured interviews (Chambers 1998) with key informants. Interview candidates from three organizations that we contacted did not respond, and one declined to participate, resulting in a participation rate of 83%. Organizations’ missions ranged from conservation to agricultural production and included both government agencies and NGOs. An extensive initial list of interview candidates was generated based on the authors’ research experience in the region. This list was designed to be as comprehensive and diverse as possible to reduce selection bias when supplemented through snowball sampling (Marcus et al. 2017). Additional interview candidates were identified using the snowball sampling technique (Newing et al. 2011), in which interview participants were asked to list other relevant organizations until we reached saturation, where no new organizations were identified by participants (Morse et al. 2014). Candidates were invited to participate in the study using a modified version of the contact approach developed by Dillman et al. (2008), which employed a pre-notice letter to describe the study and invite participation, and two reminder messages to candidates who had not yet responded.

Semi-structured interviews (Chambers 1998, Creswell and Poth 2017) focusing on topics related to land management and conservation within the study area were conducted in either Spanish or English, based on participant preference, in a one-to-one format, with an added translator for Spanish language interviews. Informed consent was obtained prior to the start of each interview. Interviews lasted approximately 30–45 min. Participants were asked to respond from an organizational rather than personal perspective. The interviews included questions about the organization’s mission, spatial scale of operations, length of time operating within the study area, land management practices, current conservation initiatives, positive and negative conservation experiences, and constraints to conservation action (for a full list of questions that were used as a starting point for discussion, see Appendix 1).

The final portion of the interviews consisted of a participatory mapping exercise using ArcGIS 10.3 software (ESRI 2011). Nineteen of the interview participants (95%) elected to complete the participatory mapping exercise. Participants were shown a map of the study area, which included aerial imagery and landmarks for reference, in ArcGIS 10.3 (ESRI 2011). The map of the study area was initially displayed at 1:70,000 scale so that the entire study area was visible on the computer screen, but participants could zoom in to view areas in greater detail. They were then and asked to draw polygons on the map to identify up to five places they believed should be prioritized for conservation (Lowery and Morse 2013). Participants were asked to explain their rationale for each place that they identified to provide context for analysis (Tyrväinen et al. 2007). Rationales were recorded as part of the broader interviews. Polygons were used for place identification because they better account for small sample sizes in participatory mapping studies than do points (Brown and Pullar 2012, Karimi et al. 2020). Limiting participants to five conservation preferences required them to prioritize specific places; however, we did not limit the area of each polygon (Lowery and Morse 2013).

Data analysis

Audio recordings of the interviews, including participatory mapping rationales, were transcribed and translated. Transcript text was coded using a hierarchical scheme in MAXQDA 18 (VERBI 2017) to highlight and organize themes that were used to contextualize and inform participatory mapping results. We used an open coding approach in which codes, which were developed from the interviews rather than existing theory, were assigned inductively (Fig. 2). We used a cyclical process in which an initial pass through the interviews was used to develop a comprehensive list of thematic codes with definitions and preliminarily to code the interview text. A second pass through the interviews was then used to refine the coding of specific passages of text, after which codes were grouped into broader themes (Hutchison et al. 2010). All interview coding was performed by a single individual to maximize consistency. Peer validation, which was used to ensure the accuracy and replicability of the coding scheme, was conducted by asking an experienced colleague to code 20% of the interview text (four randomly selected interviews) using the code list that we generated (Barber and Walczak 2009, Kvale and Brinkmann 2009). We found 85% alignment in codes used for exact words and phrases between our coded text and that of the peer evaluator, which provided confidence that our coding structure was consistent and replicable. The peer evaluator also validated our themes in the remaining interviews to ensure their comprehensibility. We then performed evaluative qualitative text analysis to compile information related to our research questions related to conservation priorities and perceived constraints.

Conservation priority polygons from the participatory mapping exercise were analyzed in ArcGIS 10.3 (ESRI 2011) to identify patterns in polygon density (Lowery and Morse 2013). To highlight areas of high participant support for conservation, we identified hotspots as those areas consisting of the top 33% of polygon density values (≥ 9 overlapping polygons; Brown and Pullar 2012). We then examined landscape gradients to identify spatial patterns in hotspot location (Brown 2004) and assess their alignment with the CBPC goal of increasing downslope forest connectivity. We used a 5 m resolution digital elevation model resampled from 30 m (U.S. Geological Survey 2014) to identify the distributions of elevations included within the study area and hotspots. Forest cover was assessed by reclassifying 5 m resolution 2013 land-cover data (Inventario Forestal Nacional de Costa Rica 2015), which was the highest resolution data set available that matched the time period of the interviews (2017–2018), into forest and non-forest classes and calculating the proportion of forest within a 100-m buffer around each cell. We also analyzed the proportion of forest cover in a 1-km buffer around hotspots to determine whether hotspots were located adjacent to areas of higher forest cover than the surrounding landscape. We calculated raster layers of Euclidean distance to the nearest protected area and to the nearest stream using boundaries and stream lines included in the Digital Atlas of Costa Rica (Ortiz-Malavasi 2014) and provided by individual reserves. We performed chi-square goodness-of-fit tests in R version 4.1.1 (R Core Team 2021) to determine whether the distribution of each landscape gradient within the hotspots differed significantly from the distribution within the study area as a whole to assess whether certain landscape characteristics were disproportionately prioritized by organizations.

Participant rationales for mapped conservation priorities were recorded, transcribed, and coded into themes as part of the broader interviews. We then appended the themes ascribed to each conservation priority hotspot to its attribute table in ArcGIS. Polygons could be linked with multiple themes. We then developed density maps for the participant-identified polygons of three common themes (reserve expansion, downslope connectivity, and water quality) to determine the total area included by polygons associated with each theme. Subsequently, we identified locations of high theme-specific density, which we considered to be areas of ≥ 5 overlapping polygons, which represented approximately the top one-third of density values (Brown and Pullar 2012). Next, we determined differences in the distributions of hotspots and individual themes by calculating the proportion of hotspot area that was included within polygons of each theme and the proportion of high-density, theme-specific areas that were included in the hotspots. We subsequently examined how theme-specific polygons differed in their distributions from one another by calculating the proportion of area that was unique to each of our three selected themes and the proportion of high-density area that was unique to each focal theme.

RESULTS

Participating organization characteristics

We conducted interviews with participants from 20 organizations that are active in land management within the study area. Participant demographics were not recorded because they were asked to answer from an organizational rather than personal perspective. Interviews were coded into 30 themes (Table 1). The majority (55%) of organizations operated at a local scale (i.e., serving a few communities), but organizations operating at regional (i.e., CBPC; 30%) and national scales (15%) were also represented. The density of organizations’ operations varied significantly within the study area. Eighteen organizations operate in the upper portion, which is more populous, has a longer conservation history and large reserves, and is the epicenter of regional tourism, whereas only five organizations operate in the largely agricultural lower portion of the study area, many of which have regional or national scopes. Organizations with regional scopes were primarily based in the upper portion of the study area. Several of the organizations interviewed are members of the CBPC council and are thus directly involved in developing corridor objectives. All participants (N = 20) expressed support for conservation initiatives within the study area, often due to a sense of pride in Costa Rica’s reputation as “a global leader and proactive country in terms of conservation initiatives,” and emphasized the benefits that conservation offers for regional economics, sustainability, and human well-being. Additionally, all participants expressed support for the CBPC and its goal of increasing downslope forest connectivity to facilitate wildlife conservation and stated a desire to align management practices with CBPC goals. Participants drew 74 total polygons (3.7 polygons per participant) to identify places that they believed should be prioritized for conservation, which encompassed 95.5% of the study area (123.3 km²). The 24 conservation hotspots, which highlighted areas of high stakeholder consensus (≥ 9 overlapping polygons), covered 10.1% of the study area (13.1 km²; Fig. 3).

Elevation

Middle elevations were significantly overrepresented within the participatory mapping hotspots, as expected (Fig. 4; χ²₁₇ = 335,306, P < 0.001). However, contrary to our prediction, upper elevations were underrepresented. Organizations targeted middle elevations because they believed that “it is important to focus on increasing forest connectivity downslope from cloud forest reserves” to facilitate animal movement and support CBPC goals. Many organizations chose not to prioritize highland areas during the mapping exercise because they felt that “from about 1200 m up, we’re in pretty good shape” due to the preponderance of reserves. The prevalence of this opinion resulted in upper elevations being proportionately underrepresented in the hotspots. Thus, our results did not support our expectation that spatial discounting would lead upper elevations to be prioritized due to their proximity to the headquarters of most organizations.

Interviews revealed that organizations tended to restrict their conservation priorities to middle elevations in contrast to CBPC connectivity goals due to the influence of perceived constraints to working at lower elevations. Because most organizations are headquartered in the highlands, “distance is the main limitation” to enacting conservation initiatives in the lowlands, “because it is very expensive and time consuming to transport people” to work on projects in that zone. Participants also highlighted the link between elevation and landowner support for conservation. One participant noted that “the middle [elevation] zone is where our major intervention is because people there are supportive of reforestation, and the highest part [of the study area] has already been doing it,” whereas the lower elevations are “a whole different ball game because the land ownership is completely different.” Nature-based tourism drives conservation patterns by providing economic incentives to landowners to take land out of production. However, access to tourism-based income is unequally distributed spatially due to existing infrastructure (e.g., roads) and the distribution of charismatic species and ecosystems. The cloud forest attracts large numbers of tourists who “want to come to experience the cloud forest, see the plants, the charismatic species, like [Resplendent] Quetzals, all of the endemic” species. The lower portion of the study area, which is tropical dry forest, lacks the same charismatic ecosystem and flagship species and attracts few tourists, so landowners must rely on other sources of income, such as cattle. Thus, landowners are resistant to taking land out of production for conservation because they cannot tap into nature-based tourism revenue by protecting land, unlike landowners at higher elevations. Therefore, the conservation success of the highlands “is not replicable, and the idea of selling these ... isolated [lowland] communities around tourism is really not very realistic.” As a result, conservation at lower elevations requires the development of new conservation strategies to address these challenges.

Protected areas

Contrary to our expectations, < 1% of the hotspot area included protected areas, despite the fact that reserves cover 16.4% of the study area. However, while hotspots significantly underrepresented protected areas, they significantly overrepresented areas located within 2 km of reserves (Fig. 5; χ²₁₁ = 519,928, P < 0.001). In interviews, several participants stated that they believed that reserves are “already well protected, so the focus needs to be on protecting the areas outside the reserves because animals need more habitat than that.” They felt that “areas near reserves should be prioritized because protecting them will increase connectivity out from protected areas,” thus reinforcing the prevailing theme of participants prioritizing conservation expansion to support the connectivity goals of the CBPC. However, despite the prevalence of participant support for expansion illustrated by hotspot locations, a few participants (N = 3) prioritized currently protected areas instead. They explained that “currently protected areas serve as important hubs for conservation, but require continual funding to maintain their status as being well protected. For example, if [they] don’t have funding for park guards, [they] can face increased poaching, encroachment [by neighboring farms], and squatting,” which can reduce conservation effectiveness. This opinion was not held by enough participants to be represented by hotspots, but emerged from qualitative analysis of interview text.

Forest cover

Hotspots significantly underrepresented areas of high forest cover and overrepresented areas with moderate to low forest cover (Fig. 6; χ²₉ = 156,481, P < 0.001). However, 1-km buffers around hotspots contained significantly greater proportions of high forest cover than the hotspots themselves (χ²₉ = 191,305, P < 0.001), but still significantly overrepresented areas with moderate to low forest cover compared to the study area as a whole (Fig. 6; χ²₉ = 248,445, P < 0.001). These results indicate that hotspots were located in areas of moderate to low forest cover adjacent to relatively intact forest patches, which supported our hypothesis that areas adjacent to high forest cover would be prioritized. While most participants indicated that “location and the need to create forested corridors within the CBPC are more important [for shaping conservation priorities] than current land cover,” a strong contingent believed that “resources need to be allocated to lower quality areas to increase connectivity,” because areas with high forest cover are generally already well protected. Thus, participants prioritized conservation expansion into areas adjacent to areas of high forest cover as a means to support the CBPC objective of increasing forest connectivity.

Water quality protection

Participant-identified hotspots significantly overrepresented areas within 1 km of streams (Fig. 7; χ²₁₁ = 30,496, P < 0.001), and 80% of the hotspot area fell within 500 m of streams. This supported our hypothesis that organizations would prioritize riparian areas. Several organizations prioritize riparian areas for reforestation because they offer an opportunity to increase both forest connectivity and water quality protection, which is beneficial to landowners given that most water used in households is sourced directly from streams. Thus, water quality protection is “something that everybody can agree on.” Because riparian restoration is the “easiest thing to get people to rally around first,” it can help to generate support for additional conservation-focused initiatives.

Conservation constraints

Interviews revealed that organizations are challenged by a range of constraints (Table 2). The most reported constraint was lack of adequate funding for conservation initiatives (especially for staff), thereby reducing effectiveness. Collaboration was also noted as a key constraint, given that each organization has its own initiatives and priorities. The CBPC was developed to provide greater structure and leadership for regional conservation and to facilitate collaboration, but “moving resources to the corridor, for each organization, is a big challenge ... [because] each organization has its own way of doing conservation.” Additionally, many organizations find it difficult to invest adequate time with the corridor council to develop collaborative programs because they are understaffed and need to focus on their own missions. Community resistance also constrains conservation initiatives, particularly at lower elevations, where landowners “rely on farming because they don’t have access to other sources of revenue, like tourism” and are thus “reluctant to take land out of production.”

Distribution of theme-specific polygons

The rationales expressed by participants for the conservation priorities they identified on the map included 14 interview themes (Table 1). Middle-elevation areas were among the most commonly identified places across each of the selected themes (Fig. 8) and were thus the location of many conservation priority hotspots. The subset of polygons representing each focal theme overlapped a large proportion of the hotspot areas, but sizeable percentages of the high-density areas of each focal theme (> 5 overlapping polygons) fell outside of the hotspots (Fig. 9). For example, lower elevation riparian areas and high-elevation springs were identified as being important for water quality protection but were not included in the hotspots (Fig. 8). Thus, key conservation targets may be missed when focusing only on areas of consensus. This idea is reinforced by the fact that substantial proportions of high-density areas of each theme were not included in the high-density areas of other themes (Fig. 9). Thus, theme-specific analysis can provide critical additional context for identifying landscape-scale participant conservation priorities and allows greater understanding of why specific places are selected.

DISCUSSION

This study demonstrates that participatory mapping can provide a spatially explicit framework for identifying and integrating priorities of a diverse group of stakeholders to facilitate effective conservation planning (Brown et al. 2019), which is a top priority for the Costa Rican biological corridor system (DeClerck et al. 2010). This approach supports regional management by identifying locations of consensus for conservation action, which can then be prioritized for future initiatives (Karimi et al. 2020). Because the hotspots themselves only show where participant conservation preferences cluster spatially, we demonstrate that semi-structured interviews and theme-specific density maps are critical tools for providing additional context to describe why places are prioritized and for highlighting key non-dominant perspectives, such as the importance of prioritizing protected areas, that might be obscured by focusing on areas of broader participant support. The conservation priority hotspots and theme-specific priority areas identified through this study can provide stakeholders with greater insights into the priorities of other organizations, which can increase opportunities for collaboration.

This case study highlights general support for biological corridor goals among participating organizations. Despite the diverse missions of the participating organizations, we found universal support for conservation action and CBPC objectives among participants. Participant conservation priorities clustered spatially, and hotspots were consistent with increasing downslope forest connectivity, which is the primary goal of the CBPC (Welch et al. 2011). Participant-identified conservation priority hotspots were concentrated at middle elevations in an attempt to expand initiatives downslope from the highland cloud forest, which is currently well protected. Additionally, participants prioritized areas with lower forest cover adjacent to reserves and other areas of high forest cover to enhance connectivity. Participants also prioritized riparian areas, which provided opportunities to bundle the expansion of downslope forest connectivity with water quality protection, which has strong landowner support (Townsend and Masters 2015, Allen and Padgett Vásquez 2017). The synergy in conservation prioritization across a range of organizations and explicit alignment of priorities with CBPC goals demonstrate that biological corridors can shape regional conservation priorities despite lacking legal authority to implement management policy. Thus, corridors can serve as tools to bring groups together to achieve common conservation goals, and participatory mapping can make this process more efficient and transparent.

The prioritization of discrete places for conservation by organizations helps explain why forest regeneration patterns vary within individual biological corridors in Costa Rica (Allen and Padgett Vásquez 2017) because meanings were ascribed to specific places within the landscape (Stedman 2003). However, organizations prioritized some of the same landscape characteristics that motivate individual landowners to allow forest regeneration, such as proximity to reserves and streams (Allen 2015). The alignment of organizations’ priorities with gradients predicting forest regeneration within the CBPC (Allen and Padgett Vásquez 2017) demonstrates that organizations are achieving tangible results along some of the same gradients that they are targeting.

This study exposed key trade-offs that must be navigated for effective regional conservation by highlighting differences in organizations’ conservation priorities. For example, most participants prioritized expanding conservation efforts beyond protected areas to increase connectivity and support migratory species and species with large home ranges (Hoekstra et al. 2005, Vandermeer and Perfecto 2007). However, interviews revealed that a minority of participants believed that reserves should remain a conservation priority to ensure they continue to operate with maximum effectiveness because they require considerable resources for upkeep, echoing the idea that purchasing land requires a single input of capital, but maintenance requires continual support (Newcomer et al. 2022). Given that this opinion was held by a small group of participants, it was not represented by the hotspots. Without a qualitative component to this study, these perspectives may have been overlooked, thus underscoring the utility of mixed-methods approaches for participatory mapping research to provide context and highlight potential sources of conflict (Lowey and Morse 2013), especially where an opinion differs from the majority (Karimi et al. 2020), which could be obscured in a strictly quantitative approach (Sletto 2009). Highlighting these alternative viewpoints will allow CBPC leadership to better balance trade-offs between conserving new areas and increasing support for existing protected areas to develop more effective and collaborative conservation plans.

Participatory mapping hotspots showed where participant conservation priorities clustered spatially, but not why those patterns emerged. The qualitative component of this study provided important contextual information about why places were prioritized, thus painting a more complete picture of conservation prioritization in the region than possible with a strictly quantitative study (Sletto 2009, Lowery and Morse 2013). Theme-specific polygons included high percentages of the hotspot area, suggesting that hotspots represented places that were prioritized for multiple reasons. Therefore, hotspots are a valuable tool for regional conservation planning because they represent areas of high stakeholder support and synergy across multiple themes. However, other areas of high theme-specific polygon density occurred outside of hotspots, and large areas were unique to each theme. Thus, theme-specific analysis is also important for planning to ensure that key areas relating to a specific theme are also considered, facilitating assessment of trade-offs (Knight et al. 2010, Lowery and Morse 2013, Karimi et al. 2020), which can lead to more effective and collaborative regional planning (DeClerck et al. 2010).

The qualitative component of this study illustrates how regional conservation is constrained by the landscape, which, despite past conservation success in the CBPC (Allen 2015) and current CBPC goals (Welch et al. 2011), could limit future success. For example, organizations based in the highlands face logistical hurdles, such as long travel times, to expanding operations at lower elevations. Additionally, nature-based tourism has provided significant economic incentives for conservation in the highlands, providing direct revenue to organizations and incentivizing landowners to adopt conservation practices. However, nature-based tourism in the highlands is driven by its charismatic species such as the Resplendent Quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno), lush vegetation, and high degree of endemism (Burlingame 2000, Newcomer et al. 2022). At lower elevations in the study area, tourism is not a significant part of the economy, requiring landowners to rely on agricultural production, leading them to be more resistant to conservation measures that conflict with production goals. As participants noted, nature-based tourism is unlikely to develop as a major driver of conservation in this area. Thus, conservation in this zone must shift away from a focus on charismatic species (Stotz et al. 1996, Stutchbury and Morton 2022) and adopt new strategies such as agroforestry practices (e.g., windbreaks) that provide ecosystem services to farmers while increasing habitat area and connectivity for forest-dependent wildlife (Harvey and González Villalobos 2007, Townsend and Masters 2015, Hendershot et al. 2020, Brownson et al. 2021) and locally targeted payments for ecosystem services programs, which often receive greater support than national programs by promoting more targeted goals and providing greater transparency (Newcomer et al. 2022). Understanding local perspectives and priorities can enhance conservation outcomes in these zones.

While this case study provides important insights into the ways in which biological corridors can shape the conservation priorities of constituent organizations in Costa Rica and thus drive landscape-level change, it may not be representative of dynamics in other biological corridors that have different landscape composition, collections of conservation organizations, and tourism infrastructure. Furthermore, our findings were shaped by the perspectives of organizations that agreed to participate. Other perspectives may not have been represented due to non-response or non-participation (Manfreda et al. 2008). Additionally, our findings may have been influenced by our sampling strategy. We attempted to develop as comprehensive and diverse an a priori list of organizations to interview as possible to reduce bias when supplementing with snowball sampling. However, it is possible that organizations that were less connected to other groups or had conflicting perspectives were not highlighted during the snowball sampling process, causing them to be unrepresented in our data set, which is a known limitation of snowball sampling (Marcus et al. 2017). While we identified the locations of regional conservation priorities and their alignment with management goals, comparing regional species-habitat use with organizations’ conservation priorities would permit a greater understanding of the benefits provided to wildlife, which could increase conservation effectiveness (Cox et al. 2014, Brown et al. 2019), allow assessment of trade-offs, and facilitate forecasting effects of management decisions (Duguma et al. 2022, White et al. 2022).

Our findings show that organizations’ conservation priorities align with CBPC goals, such as increasing downslope forest connectivity, indicating that biological corridors can shape regional conservation objectives in Costa Rica despite their lack of legislative power (DeClerck et al. 2010) and can play an important role in bringing groups together to achieve common conservation goals. We highlighted places where organizations’ conservation priorities clustered spatially and identified some key explanations for those patterns. Understanding where commonly identified conservation priorities are located spatially can increase land-use planning efficiency within the CBPC (Calvo-Alvorado et al. 2009, DeClerck et al. 2010). However, by coupling participatory mapping with semi-structured interviews, we were able to provide greater context for the locations of these priorities than possible in a strictly quantitative study (Lowery and Morse 2013), revealing key challenges for conservation in the lower portions of the CBPC, highlighting important minority opinions (e.g., maintaining currently protected areas), and identifying synergies and differences between hotspots and theme-specific priority areas. While we focused on the utility of this mixed-methods participatory mapping approach for conservation prioritization in the CBPC in Costa Rica, this approach can be used in other locations and contexts to enhance land management planning when multiple stakeholders are involved and can be used for other spatially explicit topics beyond conservation. Our approach has the benefits of highlighting places of consensus support for a land management preference, providing context for why participants selected that area, and highlighting non-dominant perspectives that might otherwise be obscured using strictly quantitative approaches to identifying participant land management preferences spatially.

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