Integrating impact evaluation into conservation organization’s practices: results from an evaluation of The Nature Conservancy’s protected areas

Background/Question/Methods

Conservation organizations rarely integrate impact evaluations into their practices, despite nearly two decades of scholars advocating for these studies. We present results from a practitioner-scholar collaboration that evaluated the impact of The Nature Conservancy’s protected areas in three regions of the USA. We used a quasi-experimental design that estimates impact by comparing changes in natural land cover on TNC’s protected areas to similar unprotected areas.

Results/Conclusions

The protected areas in the Mid-Atlantic and New England had significant positive impacts on changes in natural land cover, while those in California did not. The size of the impact of protected areas in the Mid-Atlantic was nearly two times larger than protected areas in New England. [Management factors that might have led to these differences - New England did not consider threats.]. These results provide new information on the performance of programs at TNC, which can be used as benchmarks by managers at TNC and other organizations for future protected areas being established to meet the goal of protecting 30% of lands and waters by 2030.