(4) contain the presence or potential to sustain significant wildlife populations, particularly those of large mammals. Anchor areas under private management were removed from our sample—given our goal of evaluating the impacts of transferring protected area management to private entities—leading to a final control group of 123 government managed protected areas (Figure 1a). We believe this process for constructing our control group strengthens our ability to identify changes in outcomes that are due to AP management, compared to an approach where the control group includes all non-AP-managed protected areas in Africa.

# **2 Results**

To evaluate outcomes between AP and government management, we leverage largescale datasets on wildlife, asset wealth, conflict, and management practices [52]. This comprehensive approach extends prior research documenting the effects of protected areas on land use change [53–55]. Figure 2 displays annual mean values from these diverse datasets in AP-managed protected areas before and after their transference to AP, and in government-managed protected areas. Stark differences in some outcomes pre- and post-transference to AP (Figure 2a,c,d) underscore the rich variation in our data, forming a foundation for a more careful analysis. However, these descriptive statistics are not indicative of AP management effects. Our subsequent differencein-differences analysis, normalizing time relative to transference and controlling for confounding factors, is essential to accurately attribute changes to AP management.

To assess the validity of our difference-in-differences research design, we begin by statistically comparing protected areas managed by AP to our control group of protected areas in terms of variables unaffected by protected area management and in terms of outcomes prior to AP management. Protected areas managed by AP do not statistically differ from the control group in terms of area (km<sup>2</sup> ), longitude, latitude, or annual precipitation (Table S1). However, AP-managed areas experience more extreme heat. They also exhibit uniformly worse pre-period outcomes, though not all differences are statistically significant (Table S2). Prior to transference, areas that will go on to be managed by AP experience higher elephant poaching, lower bird abundances, less tourism, more armed conflict, lower asset wealth, and less effective management practices. Our examination of outcomes in each of the five years preceding transference confirms the intuition that governments may be transferring protected areas where conditions are difficult and deteriorating. Across all but one of the variables, outcomes are similar or worsening in the protected areas that will be transferred to AP management, compared to protected areas that will continue to be managed by governments (SI A and B).

It is not surprising that protected areas in AP’s portfolio fare worse in terms of their pre-period outcomes than do protected areas in the control group. AP’s task is a difficult one, as it purposefully seeks protected areas that governments have historically struggled to manage. Governments may also be inclined to transfer management of their most challenging protected areas, given how the prospect of additional resources motivates the broader shift towards private protected area management in Africa [29]. However, the differences between the two groups of protected areas largely do 5