James E. Lyons Wayne E. Thogmartin Kevin Aagaard 2017 <p><span>Evaluating the role public lands play in meeting conservation goals is an essential step in good governance. We present a tool for comparing the regional contribution of each of a suite of wildlife management units to conservation goals. We use weighted summation (</span><i>simple additive weighting</i><span>) to compute a Unit Contribution Index (</span><i>UCI</i><span>) based on species richness, population abundance, and a conservation score based on IUCN Red List classified threat levels. We evaluate </span><i>UCI</i><span> for a subset of the 729 participating wetlands of the Integrated Waterbird Management and Monitoring (IWMM) Program across U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Regions 3 (Midwest USA), 4 (Southeast USA), and 5 (Northeast USA). We found that the median across-Region </span><i>UCI</i><span> for Region 5 was greater than Regions 3 and 4, while Region 4 had the greatest within-Region </span><i>UCI</i><span> median. This index is a powerful tool for wildlife managers to evaluate the performance of units within the conservation estate.</span></p> application/pdf 10.1016/j.gecco.2017.01.002 en Elsevier Quantifying the relative contribution of an ecological reserve to conservation objectives article