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Conserving threatened habitats on private lands requires policies that advance the interests of landowners and natural resource professionals alike. Through qualitative analysis of individual and focus-group interviews, we compared how family forest owners and natural resource professionals frame conservation of threatened habitat: the oak woodlands and savanna in Oregon. Applying constructionism to the analysis and design of specific policies, we explored policy options to facilitate cooperation and avert conflict between these stakeholders. Informants displayed three primary frames in discussions of oak conservation: the human-nature relationship, the rights and obligations of property ownership, and the role of policy in social change. Their motivations to conserve oak and preferences for conservation policy stemmed from their differing uses of these frames. Conservation easements, habitat mitigation banking, and voluntary grass-roots initiatives were three types of policy that seemed to accommodate the frames of both owners and natural resource professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the mental and biophysical terrains of family forest owners' relationships with biodiversity. We used concept mapping, in-depth unstructured interviews, property mapping, and field observation to explore owners' knowledge, beliefs and management approaches. We conducted our research in one watershed in the Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana) ecotype of western Oregon, an ecotype that is considered at risk. The owners in our sample are knowledgeable about the concept of biodiversity and believe they should steward the biodiversity of their forests through management. However, their notion of biodiversity appears to be quite generic, rather than specific to the oak ecotype in which they own land. Moreover, external economic and social forces encourage them to manage for Douglas fir rather than oak. Extending Schneider and Ingram's (1990) theoretical policy framework to conservation, we propose ways for policy to address these limitations and build on owners' motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]