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Abstract Private lands are critical for conservation of ecosystem diversity and sustaining large-scale ecological processes. Increasingly, conservation easements (CE) are used as a tool to protect private land from future development; yet, few studies have examined whether contemporary patterns of CE effectively contribute to landscape-scale biodiversity and ecosystem conservation goals. We analyzed the distribution of 1223 CE established between 1970 and 2016 in the High Divide, a region dominated by public lands and of national conservation importance in the Rocky Mountains of the United States, with respect to ecosystem representation and landscape connectivity, two common large-scale conservation goals. We found that CE were frequently located closer to water and to other land protected for biodiversity (e.g., GAP 1 and 2 status) than were private lands more generally. CE provided increased representation within the protected areas network for 10% of the ecosystems within the region, particularly for mesic and riparian areas. Despite the addition of CE to the protected areas network, we found insufficient representation for 43 out of 87 ecosystems (<5% representation on land managed for biodiversity). Protection of priority ecosystems varied across CE and illustrated potential mismatches between regional and national scale conservation goals. Furthermore, while public lands contributed the most toward conserving important areas for connectivity, CE protected potential landscape connectivity only slightly more effectively than randomly allocated areas. CE provide important complements to public lands in terms of ecosystem diversity and landscape connectivity. However, conservation planners and land managers could increase conservation benefits from CE by prioritizing under-represented ecosystems and more explicitly targeting lands to maintain landscape permeability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We define a translational ecologist as a professional ecologist with diverse disciplinary expertise and skill sets, as well as a suitable personal disposition, who engages across social, professional, and disciplinary boundaries to partner with decision makers to achieve practical environmental solutions. Becoming a translational ecologist requires specific attention to obtaining critical non-scientific disciplinary breadth and skills that are not typically gained through graduate-level education. Here, we outline a need for individuals with broad training in interdisciplinary skills, use our personal experiences as a basis for assessing the types of interdisciplinary skills that would benefit potential translational ecologists, and present steps that interested ecologists may take toward becoming translational. Skills relevant to translational ecologists may be garnered through personal experiences, informal training, short courses, fellowships, and graduate programs, among others. We argue that a translational ecology workforce is needed to bridge the gap between science and natural resource decisions. Furthermore, we argue that this task is a cooperative responsibility of individuals interested in pursuing these careers, educational institutions interested in training scientists for professional roles outside of academia, and employers seeking to hire skilled workers who can foster stakeholder-engaged decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecologists who specialize in translational ecology ( TE) seek to link ecological knowledge to decision making by integrating ecological science with the full complement of social dimensions that underlie today's complex environmental issues. TE is motivated by a search for outcomes that directly serve the needs of natural resource managers and decision makers. This objective distinguishes it from both basic and applied ecological research and, as a practice, it deliberately extends research beyond theory or opportunistic applications. TE is uniquely positioned to address complex issues through interdisciplinary team approaches and integrated scientist-practitioner partnerships. The creativity and context-specific knowledge of resource managers, practitioners, and decision makers inform and enrich the scientific process and help shape use-driven, actionable science. Moreover, addressing research questions that arise from on-the-ground management issues - as opposed to the top-down or expert-oriented perspectives of traditional science - can foster the high levels of trust and commitment that are critical for long-term, sustained engagement between partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in translational ecology ( TE) - a research approach that yields useful scientific outcomes through ongoing collaboration between scientists and stakeholders - is growing among both of these groups. Translational ecology brings together participants from different cultures and with different professional incentives. We address ways to cultivate a culture of TE, such as investing time in understanding one another's decision context and incentives, and outline common entry points to translational research, such as working through boundary organizations, building place-based research programs, and being open to opportunities as they arise. We also highlight common institutional constraints on scientists and practitioners, and ways in which collaborative research can overcome these limitations, emphasizing considerations for navigating TE within current institutional frameworks, but also pointing out ways in which institutions are evolving to facilitate translational research approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas are one of the most effective means by which biodiversity is conserved, but are often criticized for either neglecting the importance of local communities or sacrificing conservation objectives for political expedience. In the United States, federal protected areas can be designated via a democratic legislation process or via executive action, which allows for comparison of the ecological and sociopolitical context of these top‐down and bottom‐up processes. We compared protected areas resulting from congressional designation vs. presidential designation with respect to their ecological context (using measures of biodiversity and climate refugial potential) and sociopolitical context (using measures of local support for conservation and reliance on natural resource‐based industries). We found minimal differences between these designation modes for both ecological and sociopolitical variables. These results suggest that presidentially designated protected areas tend to be no more burdensome to local communities and no less valuable for ecological conservation than more widely accepted federal protected areas such as national parks, and they provide new evidence to inform the current debate over national monuments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]