Research recommends compromise when choosing conserv...(sts. The paper is an effort to strike a ...)

"What our paper does is to try to address that tension very directly," Ando said. "Suppose you're a wildlife manager and your goal is to maximize the production of water fowl. You are working with a natural production function that has to do with where the lands are and how fragmented the network is. But you're going to be able to raise more money if conservation lands are near where people are, because people are more likely to want to pay for conservation if it's close to them."

Ando said that choosing a site to protect is very case-specific, but outcomes can be improved by knowing when and when not to compromise. "If it's a species that has to live in one place or if it's an ecosystem that truly needs not to be fragmented in order to function, then the reserve should be in that one place and it should not be fragmented," she said. "We're just saying that in places where nature gives you a little bit of flexibility, then go ahead and think about where the people are in the landscape, too. At the end of the day, you'll be able to do more for nature if you get more people buying into it, willing to support it, and wanting to give money to it. "

Protecting grasslands in Illinois is one example. "One of the goals of our statewide Wildlife Action Plan is to have more restored grasslands. We've got a lot of area that's reasonably homogeneous in its restoration potential," Ando said. "So when you have that flexibility ecologically in the restored grasslands, why not put them a little bit closer to, say, Champaign-Urbana where you have a bunch of people rather than in an area where there aren't many people gaining value from what you've restored?"

Ando recognizes that economists are different from researchers in most other disciplines that study conservation. "For us, value
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