A social-ecological decision framework to support grassland bird conservation in the Upper Missouri River Basin

Grasslands in the North American Great Plains are among the continent's more at-risk and least protected ecosystems. The Upper Missouri River Basin (UMRB) is a critical region of nearly 750,000 km 2 containing grassland ecosystems vital for grassland bird biodiversity. Most land is privately owned, making voluntary conservation a potential option. Grassland birds face numerous threats with agricultural conversion of native grasslands likely the primary driver of habitat loss and fragmentation. Grasslands in the UMRB provide multiple ecosystem services to human communities including agricultural production, recreation, and wildlife habitat. Our objectives were to demonstrate how maps of social values, derived from UMRB resident surveys ( n = 1009), can be integrated with modeled grassland bird species richness and risk of habitat loss to develop a decision framework that informs conservation design and improves prioritization of voluntary conservation efforts on private lands. We used a public participation GIS survey to collect spatial data to model conservation and recreation values. These were paired with modeled bird species richness, and hotspot analysis and spatial overlays were used to identify areas of co-occurring social and ecological value. We assessed the risk of projected grassland habitat loss across different hotspot combinations. Results showed that areas with high or moderate social and ecological value made up 40% of land but accounted for 51% of projected habitat loss. This is 26% more habitat at risk than expected based on area alone. Targeting appropriate conservation strategies in these areas could yield disproportionately larger benefits in reducing habitat loss risk.