Effective conservation requires a step change in the way practitioners can contribute to science and

can have access to research outputs. The journal Conservation Evidence was established in 2004 to

help practitioners surmount several obstacles they face when attempting to document the effects of

their conservation actions scientifically. It is easily and freely accessible online. It is free to publish in

and it enables global communication of the effects of practical trials and experiments, which are

virtually impossible to get published in most scientific journals. The driving force behind

Conservation Evidence is the need to generate and share scientific information about the effects of

interventions

Amano, Tatsya

Ausden, Malcolm

Beebee, Trevor J.C.

Bullock, David

Daniels, Mike

Deutsch, James

Dicks, Lynn V.

Griffiths, Richard A.

Mitchell, Roger

Prior, Stephanie V.

Sutherland, William J.

Walsh, Jessica

Whitten, Tony

English

Kent Academic Repository

W.J.Sutherland, R. Mitchell, J. Walsh, T. Amano et al. / Conservation Evidence (2013) 10, 1-3 1 ISSN 1758-2067 Conservation practice could benefit from routine testing and publication of management outcomes William J. Sutherland1*, Roger Mitchell2, Jessica Walsh1,  Tatsuya Amano1, Malcolm Ausden3, Trevor J.C. Beebee4, David Bullock5,  Mike Daniels6, James Deutsch7, Richard A. Griffiths8, Stephanie V. Prior1, Tony Whitten9, Lynn V. Dicks1 1Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, UK   2Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, 655a Christchurch Road, Boscombe, BH1 4AP, UK  3Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Lodge, Sandy, Bedfordshire, SG19 2DL, UK 4 School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Sussex House, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UK 5 The National Trust, Heelis, Kemble Drive, Swindon, SN2 2NA, UK 6 John Muir Trust, Suite 1, South Inch Business Centre, Shore Road, Perth PH2 8BW, UK 7 Wildlife Conservation Society, 2300 Southern Blvd., Bronx, N.Y. 10460 USA 8 Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NR, UK 9 Fauna & Flora International, Jupiter House, 4th Floor, Station Road, Cambridge, CB1 2JD, UK   SUMMARY  Effective conservation requires a step change in the way practitioners can contribute to science and can have access to research outputs. The journal Conservation Evidence was established in 2004 to help practitioners surmount several obstacles they face when attempting to document the effects of their conservation actions scientifically. It is easily and freely accessible online. It is free to publish in and it enables global communication of the effects of practical trials and experiments, which are virtually impossible to get published in most scientific journals. The driving force behind Conservation Evidence is the need to generate and share scientific information about the effects of interventions.  WHY WE NEED SMALL CONSERVATION EXPERIMENTS  In1 medicine, synopses that collate published evidence on the effects of interventions are routinely published and regularly updated. These are available at ‘point-of-care’, so they can underpin decisions in clinical practice (Moja & Banzi 2011). Conservation science differs from medical research in that its subjects are far more varied, ranging from populations and species to habitats or ecosystems (Pullin & Knight 2001). As a result, the evidence base for any given intervention generally consists of a set of relatively small studies of its effects, carried out in a range of different contexts, with little standardisation of methods between studies. Whilst the number of replicates used in medical trials is often high (thousands of individuals), practical constraints mean that the number of replicates in conservation and ecology trials is usually low. Therefore, the informative value of each individual study is typically small. So there is an even greater incentive in conservation than in medicine to compare results across an accumulation of multiple cases.  The completion of the first two global synopses of evidence for biodiversity conservation, on wild bees (Dicks et al. 2010) and birds (Williams et al. 2013), provides the opportunity to review the state of conservation research as it applies in practice, and to identify examples of widely practised interventions whose effectiveness is uncertain. It is striking that for many commonly practiced interventions there seem to be few available scientific studies. For example, there were 59 interventions listed in the Bee Synopsis. For 15 of them we captured no studies at all providing direct evidence of effectiveness. These included widely advocated interventions such as connecting areas of semi-natural habitat and protecting                                                  *To whom correspondence should be addressed: w.sutherland@zoo.cam.ac.uk ‘brownfield’ (derelict urban or commercial) sites with high invertebrate diversity.   CONSERVATION PRACTITIONERS AS EXPERIMENTERS  Experimental design and data collection should not be restricted to the realm of scientists as conservation practitioners themselves could routinely document the effectiveness of interventions, sometimes at a minimal cost. This would require selecting interventions of interest for which different treatments could be carried out easily, such as comparing two means of treating patches of an invasive plant, and there is a component of the consequences that would be reasonably straightforward to measure, such as the number of plants surviving.  There are a few elements of inquiry, taken from experimental design principles, which are missing from the majority of conservation projects that we suggest could transform effectiveness, evaluation and monitoring standards in the conservation field. These are:   1. Identify a question that could change practice if solved (for example is it better to treat a particular invasive plant species in April or July or does placing signs asking visitors to stay on the path reduce or increase the probability of them doing so). This question should be something practitioners are specifically interested in, yet there is insufficient existing research.   2. Either compare two treatments (for example treating the invasive plant in different months) or compare one treatment with a control that is equivalent but without the treatment (e.g. comparing a path with signs and a similar W.J.Sutherland, R. Mitchell, J. Walsh, T. Amano et al. / Conservation Evidence (2013) 10, 1-3 2 ISSN 1758-2067 path without signs). An alternative is to compare outcomes before and after the treatment.  3. Replicate, and if possible randomise replicates. Without replication and randomisation the observed difference could be due to another reason. For example, the invasive plants in the patch treated in July could by chance have been trampled by deer.  4. Quantify the results of the test. These measurements can be simple, such as comparing the average height of a sample of the invasive plants between treatments or counting the proportion of visitors each day who leave the path along a given section.  5. Disseminate the results. The sharing of information between practitioners is capable of making a considerable difference to global practice by encouraging implementation of successful interventions and avoiding the repeated use of ineffective treatments.   There are a range of options for publishing such results, but we obviously encourage publication in the peer reviewed open access journal, Conservation Evidence. Our aim is to ease the task of publication for practitioners, by providing a journal that does not require each study to have an extensive introduction, literature review or discussion.  In 2012, the acceptance rate of papers into Conservation Evidence was 50%. The basic demands of a paper in Conservation Evidence are a description of the problem and question, a detailed account of exactly what was done and a quantification of the consequences (more detailed instructions  on  how  to submit  a paper   are   included on the Conservation Evidence website www.conservationevidence.com). We hope to entice practitioners who are interested in contributing to the scientific knowledge of conservation, through the simplicity of the journal’s content and format. Our objective of providing a means for publishing the test results of interventions by conservation practitioners has been successful. To date Conservation Evidence has published 240 papers from 27 countries, including 214 papers with authorship from non-academic organisations. We have recently produced two special issues associated with publication of the Bird Synopsis, the first outlining the effectiveness of ten interventions relating to bird reintroductions and a second that summarises 33 papers relating to bird conservation management. This year we will publish a special issue relating to the evidence for human behaviour change in conservation. We have also changed the format of the journal articles to what we consider a modern, more professional style.  The utility of adding small case studies to a growing body of open access literature is demonstrated particularly when the outcome is a negative result – showing circumstances in which the intervention does not work. The compilation of the Bird Synopsis shows the ineffectiveness of aversive conditioning of mammal predators as a conservation tool to reduce predation of threatened or important bird species (Williams et al. 2013). A recent study in Conservation Evidence demonstrated an endangered grassland bird in Paraguay did not show the anticipated use of burnt habitat (Pople & Esquivel 2012), which is critical information to assist with this species’ recovery. As another example, Smith & Lockwood (2012) found that a species translocation prior to sand dune disturbance did not result in a new population, although the original population was not actually affected in the long term by the sand removal as previously thought. The publication bias towards positive results and disregard for negative results in scientific journals (Lortie et al. 2013) compounds the issue, providing little assistance to conservation practitioners deciding on an optimal management strategy. Conservation Evidence encourages the publication of negative results, to reduce the chance that conservation resources are not spent on ineffective management.    OVERCOMING THE BARRIERS TO CONDUCTING EXPERIMENTS  We acknowledge that designing and conducting scientifically sound ecological experiments and measuring meaningful conservation outcomes are difficult tasks (Kapos et al. 2009, Underwood 2009, Jones 2012). Randomised, controlled trials, which are the gold standard experimental protocol in medicine (Sackett et al. 1996), may be challenging for social, economic and political problems (Mark 2009), but can be achieved (e.g. Joshi 2012). We note that the evidence required could be obtained at little extra cost of the overall management, by tweaking interventions rather than carrying out parallel scientific activities. These possible overlaps between science and management are important because conservation donors may be reluctant to fund projects which outline the experimental aspects of the project if they believe their money will be spent on research instead of direct conservation efforts.  We also acknowledge that many conservation practitioners do not have access to journals and do not have their time paid to write beyond the requirements of the donors of the grants they use and the proposals they write. This is a major concern because they hold a huge amount of experience and knowledge which would benefit the practice of conservation generally. It would be beneficial for conservation management, if funding bodies would recognize the need and importance of testing and publishing the outcomes of conservation work. This could also involve providing additional funding to conservation organizations to extract existing information from internal reports and the grey literature to write scientific papers, and disseminate the information more widely than their own current staff members.  Aside from these situations, with careful planning and a small amount of time, practitioners and land managers could contribute substantial amounts of useful, relevant and credible information, which would hopefully be used to improve conservation practice. If practitioners were able to regularly test interventions using sound scientific methods and make the results publically available, conservation practice would gain enormously from the shared pool of knowledge and would move towards an inquisitive culture of experimentation, critical evaluation and evidence-based practice.    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  We are grateful to Arcadia for aiding the funding of Conservation Evidence.   REFERENCES Braunisch V., Home R., Pellet J. & Arlettaz R. (2012) Conservation science relevant to action: a research agenda identified and prioritized by practitioners. Biological Conservation, 153, 201-210. W.J.Sutherland, R. Mitchell, J. Walsh, T. Amano et al. / Conservation Evidence (2013) 10, 1-3 3 ISSN 1758-2067 Conservation Evidence is an open-access online journal devoted to publishing the evidence on the effectiveness of management interventions. The pdf is free to circulate or add to other websites. The other papers from Conservation Evidence are available from the website www.ConservationEvidence.com   Burgman M., Carr A., Godden L., Gregory R., McBride M., Flander L. & Maguire L. (2011) Redefining expertise and improving ecological judgment. Conservation Letters, 4, 81-87. Dicks L.V., Showler D.A. & Sutherland W.J. (2010) Bee Conservation: Evidence for the effects of interventions. Synopses of Conservation Evidence 1. Pelagic Publishing,  Fazey I., Fischer J. & Lindenmayer D.B. (2005) What do conservation biologists publish? Biological Conservation, 124, 63-73. Jones J.P.G. (2012) Getting what you pay for: the challenge of measuring success in conservation. Animal Conservation, 15, 227–228. Joshi R. (2012) Gujjar community resettlement from Rajaji National Park, Uttarakhand, India. Conservation Evidence, 9, 3-8. Kapos V., Balmford A., Aveling R., Bubb P., Carey P., Entwistle A., Hopkins J., Mulliken T., Safford R., Stattersfield A., Walpole M. & Manica A. (2009) Outcomes, not implementation, predict conservation success. Oryx, 43, 336-342. Lahsen M. & Nobre C.A. (2007) Challenges of connecting international science and local level sustainability efforts: the case of the Large-Scale Biosphere–Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia. Environmental Science & Policy, 10, 62-74. Lortie C.J., Aarssen L.W., Budden A.E. & Leimu R. (2013) Do citations and impact factors relate to the real numbers in publications? A case study of citation rates, impact, and effect sizes in ecology and evolutionary biology. Scientometrics, 94, 675-682. Mark M.M. (2009) Changing the terms of the debate. Pgs. 214-238 in: S. I. Donaldson, C. A. Christie and M. M. Mark (eds) What counts as credible evidence in applied research and evaluation practice? Vol. 1, Sage Publications, Los Angeles. Moja L. & Banzi R. (2011) Navigators for medicine: evolution of online point-of-care evidence-based services. International Journal of Clinical Practice, 65, 6-11. Pople R.G. & Esquivel A. (2012) Response of White-winged Nightjars Eleothreptus candicans to a prescribed burn of cerrado grassland at Bosque Mbaracayú Biosphere Reserve, Paraguay. Conservation Evidence, 9, 36-42. Pullin A.S. & Knight T.M. (2001) Effectiveness in conservation practice: pointers from medicine and public health. Conservation Biology, 15, 50-54. Runge M.C., Converse S.J. & Lyons J.E. (2011) Which uncertainty? Using expert elicitation and expected value of information to design an adaptive program. Biological Conservation, 144, 1214-1223. Sackett D.L., Rosenberg W.M., Gray J.M., Haynes R.B. & Richardson W.S. (1996) Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't. British Medical Journal, 312, 71-72. Smith P.H. & Lockwood P.A. (2012) Translocating Isle of Man cabbage Coincya monensis ssp. monensis in the sand-dunes of the Sefton coast, Merseyside, UK. Conservation Evidence, 9, 67-71. Sutherland W.J., Pullin A.S., Dolman P.M. & Knight T.M. (2005) Response to Mathevet and Mauchamp: evidence-based conservation: dealing with social issues. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 20, 424-425.   Sutherland W.J. (2006) Predicting the ecological consequences of environmental change: a review of the methods. Journal of Applied Ecology, 43, 599-616. Sutherland W.J., Fleishman E., Mascia M.B., Pretty J. & Rudd M.A. (2011) Methods for collaboratively identifying research priorities and emerging issues in science and policy. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2, 238-247. Sutherland W.J., Mitchell R. & Prior S.V. (2012) The role of 'Conservation Evidence' in improving conservation management. Conservation Evidence, 9, 1-2. Underwood A.J. (2009) Components of design in ecological field experiments. Annales Zoologici Fennici, 46, 93-111. Walsh J.C., Wilson K.A., Benshemesh J. & Possingham H.P. (2012) Unexpected outcomes of invasive predator control: the importance of evaluating conservation management actions. Animal Conservation, 15, 319–328. Williams D.R., Child M.F., Dicks L.V., zu Ermgassen E.K.H.J., Pople R.G., Showler D.A. & Sutherland W.J. (2013) Bird Conservation: Evidence for the effects of interventions. Synopses of Conservation Evidence 2, Pelagic Publishing. 

Bird Conservation: Evidence for the effects of interventions. Synopses of Conservation Evidence 2, Pelagic Publishing.

Challenges of connecting international science and local level sustainability efforts: the case of the Large-Scale Biosphere–Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia.

Changing the terms of the debate. Pgs. 214-238 in:

Components of design in ecological field experiments.

Do citations and impact factors relate to the real numbers in publications? A case study of citation rates, impact, and effect sizes in ecology and evolutionary biology.

Effectiveness in conservation practice: pointers from medicine and public health.

Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't.

Getting what you pay for: the challenge of measuring success in conservation.

Gujjar community resettlement from Rajaji National Park,

Methods for collaboratively identifying research priorities and emerging issues in science and policy.

Navigators for medicine: evolution of online point-of-care evidence-based services.

Outcomes, not implementation, predict conservation success.

Predicting the ecological consequences of environmental change: a review of the methods.

Response of White-winged Nightjars Eleothreptus candicans to a prescribed burn of cerrado grassland at Bosque Mbaracayú Biosphere Reserve, Paraguay.

Response to Mathevet and Mauchamp: evidencebased conservation: dealing with social issues.

Synopses of Conservation Evidence 1. Pelagic Publishing, Fazey

The role of 'Conservation Evidence' in improving conservation management.

Translocating Isle of Man cabbage Coincya monensis ssp. monensis in the sanddunes of the Sefton coast,

Unexpected outcomes of invasive predator control: the importance of evaluating conservation management actions.

Which uncertainty? Using expert elicitation and expected value of information to design an adaptive program.

Conservation practice could benefit from routine testing and publication of management outcomes

Effective conservation requires a step change in the way practitioners can contribute to science and can have access to research outputs. The journal Conservation Evidence was established in 2004 to help practitioners surmount several obstacles they face when attempting to document the effects of their conservation actions scientifically. It is easily and freely accessible online. It is free to publish in and it enables global communication of the effects of practical trials and experiments, which are virtually impossible to get published in most scientific journals. The driving force behind Conservation Evidence is the need to generate and share scientific information about the effects of interventions

Amano, Tatsuya

University of Queensland eSpace

http://kar.kent.ac.uk/54249/1/Sutherland%20et%20al%202013%20Cons%20Evidence.pdf

Conservation practice could benefit from routine testing and publication of management outcomes

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