Data from: The contribution of land tenure diversity to the spatial resilience of protected area networks

1. The relationship between diversity and resilience is relatively well-established for ecological systems, but remains much less explored for socioeconomic systems. Institutional diversity may have particular relevance for protected areas, whose managerial responses to environmental change depend on their legal basis, ability to make and enforce rules, and socio-political acceptance and endorsement. 2. Protected area expansion strategies are increasingly turning to private land conservation to increase the configuration and connectivity of national protected area networks. Yet we know little about the relative role of privately-owned protected areas in protecting threatened and poorly protected (under-represented) habitats, and in the overall connectivity of the national protected area network. 3. We present an empirical assessment of protected area tenure diversity across South Africa. 4. Privately-owned protected areas comprise 25.58% (2878422.26 ha) of the area of the total protected area estate. 5. Private nature reserves emerged as the dominant protected area type in under-represented and threatened habitats, protecting, on average, 32%, 38%, and 41%, respectively, of poorly protected, threatened and endangered vegetation classes. 6. Private nature reserves had the largest overall effect, compared to other protected area types, on connectivity within the national network. A spatially randomised comparison showed that privately-owned protected areas are over-dispersed and more strategically positioned to connect other types of protected areas than would be expected by chance from their extent and abundance. 7. Our results suggest that privately-owned protected areas enhance the resilience of the national protected area network, making it more extensive and better-connected, with greater levels of habitat redundancy. More generally, our analysis highlights the potentially valuable role of institutional diversity in building resilient habitat networks for biodiversity conservation. South African Formally Proclaimed Protected Areas (Reserves)Formal protected areas (PAs) in South Africa (ones that are counted towards the total conservation estate) are defined according to the National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act (2003), and include national parks, special nature reserves, nature reserves and protected environments (Department of Environmental Affairs 2015). World heritage sites and mountain catchment areas are also included in this act, though they are declared and governed by their own legislation (Department of Environmental Affairs 2015). World heritage sites were omitted from this dataset because their core areas overlap with other PAs. Protected environments can also overlap with other PA types and were thus excluded. All types of PAs can exist on private land (Cumming & Daniels 2014). Our final PA boundary dataset comprised GIS data, consolidated using ArcGIS 10.5 (ESRI 2017) from the national PA register (South African PA Dataset; PACA), provincial conservation authorities, and national gazettes (see Table S1.2, described in DEA 2013). PAs not included in PACA, but designated in other datasets were systematically added to the master PA data layer, after checking the online gazettes (accessed through sabinet.co.za) for any relevant PA degrading, downsizing or degazettement (PADDDing, Mascia & Pailler 2011; Mascia et al. 2014). A big data gap existed, however, due to older private nature reserves that were not well established in the national PA register. Since these areas do officially form part of the country’s conservation estate (Cumming & Daniels 2014), we mapped them by matching the farm names, numbers and portions designated in both current and retrospective provincial gazettes with those in a farm-portion-level cadastral dataset, obtained from AfriGIS (2012). Identified polygons were extracted from the cadastral dataset, and attribute data were edited to reflect the declaration date (and degazettement date, where appropriate), its gazette number, and ownership details. All datasets were projected to Albers Equal Area and consolidated using this projection. More details, references and metadata descriptions can be found in the “README” file.FormalPAs_reserves.zip