Environmental policies that require native vegetation conservation can be challenging to implement, especially in productive agricultural landscapes. In Brazil, the Brazilian Native Vegetation Protection Law mandates ‘Legal Reserves’, protected native vegetation that landowners must retain on their properties. If landowners do not have the required minimum amount of native vegetation on their properties (the Legal Reserve ‘target’), they must either restore vegetation on the same property to meet the target, or compensate by protecting existing vegetation or restoring it on another property, ideally in ecologically equivalent areas. Here, we evaluate how different strategies (on-site/off-site protection and/or restoration), and different requirements for ecological equivalence when off-site strategies are used, affect the ability to achieve Legal Reserve targets, while minimising the need to restore native vegetation on productive farmland. We used a novel iterative tool to build scenarios that reflect different combinations of strategies to meet the minimum conservation target under different requirements for ecological equivalence, and compared their ability to achieve the target and their likely cost. The Atlantic Forest was the only biome where it was not possible to achieve the Legal Reserve target by protection of existing native vegetation, even when ecological equivalence rules were relaxed. As a consequence, vegetation restoration is required in this biome. Directing this required restoration to pasturelands that are less-suitable for agriculture allowed the target to be achieved in all states of Brazil, as long as only minimal ecological equivalence was required; however, for most states, the need to restore native vegetation on productive areas on farmlands could still be avoided while requiring medium to high ecological equivalence. These findings show the potential for moderate ecological equivalence to be achieved across most of Brazil in a cost-effective way and without impairing productive lands when seeking to meet the Legal Reserve targets.

需要原生植物保护的环境政策可能难以实施，尤其是在生产性农业景观中。在巴西，《巴西原生植被保护法》规定了“法律保护区”，即土地所有者必须在其财产上保留的受保护的原生植被。如果土地所有者的财产上没有最低限度的原生植被（法定储备的“目标”），则他们必须恢复同一财产上的植被以达到目标，或者通过保护现有植被或将其恢复到另一财产上来进行补偿，最好是在生态等效的地区。在这里，我们评估了使用异地策略时如何采取不同的策略（现场/异地保护和/或恢复）以及对生态等效性的不同要求，影响实现法定储备目标的能力，同时最大程度地减少恢复生产性农田上的原生植被的需求。我们使用一种新颖的迭代工具来构建方案，以反映在生态等效性的不同要求下满足最低保护目标的不同策略组合，并比较了实现目标的能力和可能的成本。大西洋森林是唯一的生物群落，即使放宽了生态等效规则，也无法通过保护现有的本地植被来实现法定保护区的目标。结果，在该生物群落中需要恢复植被。将所需的恢复工作定向到不太适合农业的牧场上，可以在巴西所有州实现这一目标，只要只需要最小的生态等效性；但是，对于大多数州来说，在需要中等至高度的生态等效性的同时，仍可以避免在农田的生产区恢复原生植被的需要。这些发现表明，在寻求实现法定储备目标时，可以在巴西大部分地区以具有成本效益的方式实现适度的生态等效，而又不损害生产用地。