In Georgia and Alabama, USA, the American Forest Foundation and Longleaf Alliance implement a habitat credit trading system on family forestlands. It aimed to develop a voluntary incentive approach for conservation of non-listed species such as gopher tortoise by generating new income options for private landowners. This was to address the primary causes for gopher tortoise decline, conserve a suite of other species, while providing valuable environmental services as conservation of forests, timber products.
Success factors are the set up of an advisory group of stakeholders for consultations throughout the entire process. as well as a framework for monitoring, evaluation and adaptation protocols.
