Assessing economic and biological tradeoffs to target conservation easements in western rangelands

Conservation easements are a common tool for protecting important habitat and migration corridors from development across increasingly fragmented western rangelands. Spatially-explicit land market transaction data to evaluate and target easements, however, is sparse or non-existent in many western states. We demonstrate a propensity score matching (PSM) model using available assessment data to estimate unobservable future residential values and probability of habitat loss associated with agricultural parcels. Combined with available parcel-level biological benefits data, the PSM model’s estimates of residential value and probability of loss can be used to target conservation easements cost-effectively.