La Custòdia del territori. L¿aplicació a Catalunya de les noves tècniques nord-americanes de protecció de la natura i el paisatge en propietats privades

Abstract

It is now accepted that protected areas alone cannot secure global biodiversity conservation. In the USA, and particu-larly New England, public protected areas are restricted to a small percentage of the land. Since the 1960¿s land trusts, private non-profit organisations, have been protecting private lands for conservation using a variety of innova-tive techniques (donations or purchases of land, conservation easements, and others). These constitute an important part of the so-called land stewardship. In Canada, landowner contact programs, as a means to verbal land protection agreements, follow the same principles while legislative support for more formal techniques is developing. Application of these concepts to Catalonia is discussed with special emphasis to those techniques not involving any legislation. Land stewardship could be the basis for professionalizing the catalan conservation groups in a new activity of high public recognition.