November 2026

Systematic conservation planning began in the late 1980s, partly because protected areas were being set up around iconic species and landscapes, while many ecosystems, especially flat, fertile land suited to agriculture, were left out. The approach aimed to make the choice of where to put new protected areas more systematic, with targets for species and habitats. It has since grown to include ecosystem services, zoning for different land and sea uses, and climate change. For a long time much of the focus has been on mapping the most important and most threatened places. But is a map of important places really what decision-makers need? And if some of those places can't realistically be saved, should they still be the priority?

In this episode I put these questions to Hugh Possingham, Professor at the University of Queensland and co-developer of Marxan, one of the most widely used conservation planning tools. He explains why he thinks we should prioritise actions rather than places, and how knowing whether a threat can be stopped should change where we act. We also discuss what the 30 by 30 target and OECMs mean for conservation planning.

Links to resurces:

• Marxan Planning Platform (MaPP) – The free, web-based version of Marxan that Hugh mentions and which he co-developed.

• Effective conservation requires clear objectives and prioritizing actions, not places or species – 2015 article by Brown, Bode, Possingham and co-authors in PNAS that sets out the "verb" versus "place" argument.

• Systematic conservation planning – Margules and Pressey's 2000 article in Nature, a foundational paper for the field.

• Beyond area: evaluating Australia's contribution to Aichi Target 11 and implications for 30 × 30 – 2026 article by Watson, Possingham and co-authors in Conservation Science and Practice.