Effective and efficient conservation efforts are essential to combat the declining biodiversity and increasing threats to our planet's ecosystems. With limited resources and urgent challenges, conservationists need to adopt verifiable, evidence-based approaches to achieve the most effective and appropriate interventions - the biggest bang for the invested money. Evidence-based practice involves integrating scientific evidence based on data with practitioner expertise to make informed decisions about how to provide the most effective services or interventions.
Using evidence-based approaches is well-established in various fields such as healthcare management, education, business, engineering, agriculture, and sports medicine. It involves collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing data to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation interventions and to guide the design and implementation of future actions. This approach allows conservationists to make informed decisions based on reliable data, demonstrate the impact of their interventions, and build support for conservation efforts.
Conservation planning is a critical component of effective and efficient conservation efforts. The Conservation Measures Partnership CMP has developed a five-step Project Cycle for the successful implementation of conservation projects. Lemu´s Project Cycle is a modification of the CMP core. This cycle includes assessing the purpose and critical threats, planning goals and strategies, implementing actions and monitoring progress, analyzing data, and sharing the results. Additionally, two essential plans in conservation planning are the management plan and the monitoring plan, which outline the specific conservation actions needed to address the threats identified and the methods, protocols, and indicators needed to measure the effectiveness of the conservation management plan.
To achieve verifiable and evidence-based conservation, conservationists must establish the necessary infrastructure and processes to manage and report on project information effectively. Two major supporting tools are available to help project managers in this endeavor: the Conservation Standards and the Miradi conservation project management software. These tools provide a set of principles and practices that unify common concepts, approaches, and terminology for the design, management, and monitoring of conservation projects, and they offer a range of analytical tools, data visualizations, reports, and practical examples from the field of conservation.
Effective and efficient conservation is essential to achieve the desired outcomes of conservation interventions. Evidence-based conservation helps conservationists make informed decisions, demonstrate the impact of their interventions, and build support for conservation efforts. By adopting verifiable, evidence-based approaches and utilizing supporting tools, conservationists can ensure that their interventions are effective and sustainable in the long run, resulting in the best possible outcomes for biodiversity conservation.
The basis of verifiable, evidence-based conservation is the use of monitoring programs that help assess the effectiveness of conservation actions, inform management decisions, detect long-term population dynamics, and raise awareness among stakeholders and policymakers.
However, monitoring alone cannot achieve evidence-based conservation. It requires additional steps, such as data analysis, synthesizing evidence, scrutiny, transparency, and open access to monitoring results and synthesis. These steps allow us to qualify and quantify conservation outcomes rather than just report on project outputs.
Outputs refer to the tangible and measurable products, specific deliverables or activities that are produced as part of a project, while outcomes refer to the broader and longer-term changes or impacts that a project is intended to achieve. Outcomes are ultimately what determine a project's success in achieving its goals and making a positive impact.
The importance of evidence-based conservation is increasingly being recognized, with many conservation organizations and practitioners using rigorous scientific evidence to guide their decisions and actions. There has also been a growing emphasis on monitoring and evaluating conservation projects to assess their effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. This approach allows conservation practitioners to collect empirical data on the outcomes of their interventions, which can be used to refine and improve future conservation efforts.
To achieve verifiable, evidence-based conservation, we must prioritize the necessary infrastructure and processes to manage and report on project information effectively. We can use supporting tools such as the Conservation Standards and the Miradi conservation project management software to help project managers in this endeavor. Additionally, open-access data repositories such as Dryad can host the data for outside revision and additional data analysis.
In conclusion, verifiable, evidence-based conservation is essential to ensure that our conservation efforts are effective and sustainable in the long run. We must prioritize monitoring programs, data analysis, synthesizing evidence, scrutiny, transparency, and open access to monitoring results and synthesis to achieve this goal. By doing so, we can achieve the best possible outcomes for biodiversity conservation.
