Private protected areas exhibit greater bias towards unproductive land compared to public protected areas

Abstract Globally, private protected areas (PPAs) have become an important tool for biodiversity conservation. While they are expanding in size and number, there is limited evidence on their potential impact on avoiding biodiversity loss, and how this impact compares to the public protected areas (public PAs). The impact of protection is measured as the actual biodiversity outcome within the area protected relative to the hypothetical outcome without protection. To maximise this positive impact, PAs need to be placed strategically on land that both harbours biodiversity and would be at risk of losing some of the biodiversity if it were not protected. We evaluate and compare the locations of PPAs and public PAs relative to random sites of similar governance type, and a range of covariates that capture biodiversity and the risk of biodiversity loss. We utilised data from a national PA database, and high-resolution data on nationally significant threatened species and indicators that capture risk of biodiversity loss at a continental scale in Australia. We find that PPAs tend to target areas of high threatened species richness. However, on average, PPAs are placed in areas that have lower risk of being cleared compared to randomly selected private land. We observe that this bias towards unproductive land is more prominent in PPAs when compared to public PAs. As nations work towards effectively conserving and managing at least 30% of the world’s lands by 2030 under the new Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, it becomes essential to prioritise PAs and PPAs that deliver impacts on avoiding biodiversity loss rather than solely focusing on areas that represent biodiversity.