• Two lions rest near a fence in the Kariega private nature reserve, Eastern Cape, South Africa (Photo credit: Cynthia Annett).

This image is taken from the plain language summary – Privately-owned protected areas contribute to the resilience of protected area network – for the Research Article by Alta De Vos & Graeme S. Cumming – The contribution of land tenure diversity to the spatial resilience of protected area networks recently published in People and Nature.

The article assesses the relative contributions of state-owned and privately-owned protected areas to South Africa’s formal protected area estate, and its contributions to the connectivity of the estate. It reports that 25.58% of the total formal estate comprises privately-owned formally protected land, and that these private areas are the dominant protected area types in under-represented and threatened habitats. Private nature reserves also had the largest overall effect on connectivity within the national network, and were more strategically positioned to connect other types of protected areas than would be expected by chance from their extent and abundance.