Strategic reserve design in the central coast of British Columbia: integrating ecological and industrial goals

Few conservation reserves worldwide have been created in ways that are likely to promote the persistence of species, ecosystems, and ecological processes regarded as being representative of biological diversity. We demonstrate the application of newer approaches to systematic reserve design that could help stakeholders find designs that maximise simultaneously ecological, societal, and industrial goals. We created example reserve designs using the simulated annealing algorithm of SITES 1.0 and then contrasted these designs with a proposed reserve design negotiated as a multi-stakeholder process for British Columbia's central coast. Our strategic approach recommended reserve designs that included greater proportions of key conservation elements identified by stakeholders without increasing the land area or timber volume in reserves currently under consideration for protection. Our examples demonstrate that strategic approaches to reserve design can facilitate the repeatable and efficient allocation of land to conservation and development, and therefore, represent an improvement on ad hoc methods. Readily available software facilitates the exploration of alternative conservation and societal values, incorporates the interests of multiple stakeholders, and provides a focus and catalyst for discussion at the planning table.