Conserving biodiversity by conserving land

Society faces difficult choices over whether to allow habitat conversion for economic gain versus conserving habitat to protect biodiversity. Because the conservation of biodiversity and the material well being of the human population are both important goals, it is important to set conservation priorities intelligently and minimize the reduction in other goals from pursuing conservation. In this paper, our objective is to ensure that the maximum amount of biodiversity is conserved for any given level of cost. We illustrate our approach to this problem using land value data, taxonomic and geographical distribution data for breeding bird species in Oregon.