Towards a Characterization of Working Forest Conservation Easements in Georgia, USA

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Though I’m nor familiar to the U.S. conservation easements, I read the manuscript interestingly. I make some comments from general point of view.

This research is a case study in Georgia. How can the results contribute to other areas in the US, and moreover to forest conservation policies in other countries? Since I’m nor familiar to the US conservation easements and its role in the U.S. forest conservation policy, I expect some generalization and usefulness of the findings.

L.318 and Table 2: “land type”  

Is this same with “land use type”?  If yes, words should be unified.

L. 344: “Wildlife or fishing purposes”

Does this mean “hunting or fishing purposes”?

Table 3 , 4 and 6 should be referred in the text.

L.380: “Approximately 86%”

Is “Approximately 87%” correct?

The theme of the manuscript is to establish a typology, but I don’t think the results show typology clearly. In the discussion, the authors describe that the characteristics of the WFCEs are likely to similar regardless of size, and moreover, the authors describe easement contracts are similar to normal properties; the manuscript shows the similarities rather than typology. What different types were found  for WFCEs? What kind of typological characteristics were found? I think some supplemental explanations should be necessary to keep the consistency between the theme and the findings.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This ms explores several characteristics of Conservation Easements in Georgia, from their main objectives to the activities that are permitted and restricted. It is based on a content analysis of contracts and reports of 86 easements supervised by computer, and gives important insights on these so-called WFCEs. I consider this study as very original and particularly relevant for forest management and conservation research. The ms itself is really well-written and the line of reasoning is clear and easy to follow. The methods used are robust and relevant. Yet, I have two main concerns about the present version of the ms, that I think authors could handle through a major revision.

My first concern is about the results and the analyses proposed by the authors, which somehow do not reflect the richness of their study. Indeed, while they have a rich material to conduct a mixed analysis of their data, mixing qualitative and quantitative methods, the authors underuse the potential of their database. In particular, I think that multivariate analyses could really help further navigate into the richness of the database, while providing a synthetic insight of this research. Please, see my specific comments below for some concrete suggestions about additional analyses that could greatly improve the overall quality and impact of this work.

My second main concern is about the discussion. Indeed, I think that the authors do not fully use their results and the available literature to really provide a sound discussion about the potential and limitations of WFCEs to reconcile economic, social and ecological goals. In particular, I identified a clear lack of awareness about the existing literature on forest fragmentation and connectivity in agricultural areas. I also suggest the authors to elaborate about the trade-offs between timber harvest and biodiversity conservation, given their results that forest management was not highly restricted in WFCEs.

Overall, I think this work is very valuable and could provide great insights about WFCEs in particular, and about forest conservation vs. exploitation in general. The authors have all the materials to do so, so I recommend a major revision of the ms. I hope the comments below will help them towards this revision.

Title: You do not establish a typology of WFCEs in your ms, so I think the title is misaligned with the content of the text. Please revise the title accordingly.

Abstract:

The abstract does not properly highlight the richness of this study and is very elusive about the main results. We lack one or two sentences explaining the approach and the methodology. Key results about % of land types, allowed and restricted forest management practices, and CE sizes could be added. A final sentence drawing some implications of this work, for managers and/or researchers, would also be useful.

Introduction:

L.70: Which year CEs have been created in the U.S. law?

I am not sure that all the details about taxes are necessary here, as this is not something you analyze in your study. It is only at the end of the introduction that the reader understands what is your research question and objectives, because in-between you give many details about several aspects of WFCEs. I recommend you to go straight to the point. Readers must know that your primary focus will be on the objectives and activities in WFCEs after the first § of the introduction.

M&M:

The M&M section is clear and straight to the point. Yet, the methodology subsection is quite long and I think it would benefit from a figure synthetizing the analytical procedure.

Also, in reading the methodology subsection, I sometimes had the feeling that some § were presenting actual results. For example, the identification of nine land use types and their description sound as results to me as you extracted this information from the documents you analyzed (L.194-236), as well as the nature of recreational activities, the types of hydrologic features, and the restrictions on forest harvest. As a consequence, I think the methodology section could be drastically shortened in transferring some information into the results section. This recommendation sounds even more important for the overall of your ms as your results section looks very short.

L.110: What are these ‘baseline property reports’ and what do they contain? This information is provided on L.128, but I think it would be easier for readers to have this information the first time you evoke baseline property reports.

L.115: Do you have an idea about the total number of WFCEs in Georgia? And the percentage of forestland they cover in this State?

L.119: does the mention of ‘land use types’ here mean that not all areas under WFCEs are covered with forests? If so, we miss information to understand why land use types other than forests are allowed under WFCEs.

L.134: If WFCEs started around 1980 as previously mentioned, this means that your sample only captured most recent WFCEs. Could you justify the reason? Could you also discuss if this may bias your results, for example due to potential differences between early WCFEs and recent ones?

Table 1: Due to the very low number of easements <100 acres (N=3), it may be more relevant to merge the first two categories into one ‘<500 acres’ category.

L.146: How could you explain that GA_1 region has less WFCEs than GA_2?

L.192: ‘were examined’ instead of ‘are examined’?

Results:

In a results section, you shall not cite external references. Indeed, this section should be exclusively dedicated at presenting your own results, without mixing them with external sources (this is the role of the discussion section). So you have to remove all cited references from your results and adapt your text accordingly (L.302 and 317 in particular).

L.298-300: Cite the Figure 2 at the end of this sentence and remove the last sentence on L.306.

L.300-305: Could you elaborate about the content of each theme in providing concrete examples? For example, protecting migration routes for what particular species? Preserving historical resources such as? Enhancing habitat connectivity in doing what? Etc.

L.310: In this subsection, you could easily add preliminary § to present the different land use types you found in the documents (moving this information from the methodology to here).

L.318-327: This analysis is very important to your ms, because it is quite original and very informative. I think you should reinforce it in introducing some statistical analyses. In particular, I would recommend you to perform a Principal Component Analysis from the data presented in Table 2. This analysis will effectively allow you to identify which land use types are similar/dissimilar when considering easement themes. You also could conduct a Hierarchical Clustering on Principal Components (HCPC) to identify potential land use types clusters. As you’re using the R software, these methods could be easily implemented with the FactoMineR package for example.

Table 2: I think it would be better if this table is converted into a figure. For each land use type, you could draw stacked barplots with the prevalence of easement themes. There is no reference of the Table 2 in the text (the reference should be added on L. 319).

Table 3: Not cited in the text neither.

Table 6: Not cited in the text. I recommend to enrich your analysis with ANOVA or Kruskall-Wallis tests to explore the class size effect on each type of restrictions. I also recommend you to merge Tables 5 and 6 into one Table, as they are quite redundant.

Discussion:

L.418-420: I am not sure I agree with this statement. Habitat connectivity is indeed a key challenge in agricultural areas that hold fragmented forest patches. Intensive agricultural areas could effectively greatly affect the capacity of species to move among forest patches, while the implementation of corridors (such as hedgerows) can foster connectivity. I recommend the authors to further discuss these connectivity issues in light of the relevant literature. From the results presented here, I would say that connectivity appears as a neglected challenge in WFCEs.

L.436-442: Given the results discussed here, we can wonder if WFCEs make a big difference for biodiversity conservation. As you have found earlier, clear cuts are allowed in many CEs, which might have a large impact on biodiversity. There seems to have an obvious gap between the prevalence of endangered species conservation objectives and timber harvest activities. Discussing trade-offs between the two and how this might affect WFCEs effectiveness for biodiversity conservation is necessary.

L.451-452: Given that forest harvesting is allowed in most easements, I am not sure we can state that the mere existence of an easement is enough to guarantee wildlife protection.

L.496-497: So if there are no substantial restrictions on forest management, the effective role of CEs to protect ecosystems and biodiversity is questionable, right? You could use the existing literature to further elaborate about this point. In particular, many studies have investigated the influence of forest management and harvesting techniques on biodiversity.

Conclusions:

I think the conclusions should be nuanced in light of my former comments about trade-offs between forest management and effective biodiversity conservation. What are the main forces of WFCEs from an economic, social and ecological point of views? On the contrary, what are their main limitations?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have properly integrated or answered the comments made by the reviewers. I think this version can be accepted for publication.