The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) has
developed and applied a landscape-scale conservation planning
methodology in eight priority conservation landscapes
in Africa, areas we call African Heartlands. The foundation
of the African Heartland Program is a landscape-scale
planning process that has been developed and applied as
part of the overall Heartland Conservation Process. This
process helps AWF and its partners develop intervention
strategies that address critical threats to the ecological
viability of these landscapes, and to specific biodiversity
conservation targets, whilst also working to improve the
livelihoods of local people. In applying this participatory
planning process to eight conservation landscapes in Africa
we have begun to document and learn about the benefits and
limitations of planning and implementation at the landscapescalewith
stakeholders.Wedrawout lessons on the challenges
and successes from our experience. Central to this are the
merits of balancing a systematic science-based and pragmatic
approach to landscape-scale conservation planning while addressing
the needs and aspirations of local people. This
approach could be particularly useful for other large-scale
conservation planning efforts in developing countries where
conservation objectives and human livelihoods are inextricably
linked.