About this Research Topic
To be successful, wildlife conservation policies, programmes, and institutions must achieve desirable ecological outcomes such as species recovery, changes in population trends, or habitat protection, as well as desirable social outcomes such as reductions in economic losses, disease transmission, or human-wildlife conflict.
However, it can be difficult to identify specific indicators of success and negotiate trade-offs among multiple, potentially competing, desirable outcomes.
• Who gets to define what counts as conservation success?
• What ecological and social outcomes do we measure, why, and using which metrics?
• When we have information on ecological and social outcomes, how do we use it to evaluate whether a conservation policy, programme or institution has been successful?
• Who makes policy and operational decisions?
• Who holds decision makers to account, and how?
These questions are especially relevant as landscapes, species assemblages, and social values regarding the purposes of conservation change due to deliberate human interventions (e.g. land use designation, species recovery efforts, reintroductions, or translocations) and climate change (e.g. community composition or species range shifts).
Policies, programmes, and institutions that cannot flexibly adapt to such changes risk becoming obsolete by pursuing objectives that are no longer ecologically feasible or socially desirable. Moreover, failing to adequately accommodate ecological and social change can negatively impact biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human health and livelihoods. High-profile examples include: efforts to recover populations of economically, culturally, and ecologically important species such as white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in North America, brown bears (Ursos arctos) in Scandinavia, elephants (Loxodonta africana) in sub-Saharan Africa, or tigers (Panthera tigris) in parts of India, which have now become “too successful”; and costly but futile attempts to eradicate non-native species without fully evaluating the ecological, economic, and cultural impacts of those species or unintended consequences of eradication attempts.
Systematically detailing and comparing diverse examples of how to define, measure, and evaluate conservation success would provide valuable opportunities to learn across socioecological contexts about what does and does not work, by which measures. We invite researchers and practitioners to submit manuscripts presenting empirical findings, for example individual or comparative case studies, systematic reviews, and longitudinal studies, as well as perspectives proposing new, practically orientated ways of defining, measuring, or evaluating conservation success. We are particularly interested in contributions that focus on identifying and evaluating outcomes, not solely describing how governance or management processes operate.
Articles may cover any species, ecosystems, or landscapes. Suitable articles might:
• Describe policies or programmes that have succeeded or failed, by which measures
• Elaborate on indicators used to measure success, pros and cons of those indicators, additional indicators that are currently missing, and why including them would be an improvement
• Reveal factors influencing the ability of conservation institutions or processes to adapt and survive over time (i.e. viability)
• Identify ecological or social leverage points that affect outcomes
• Describe contours of conflict among stakeholders, and how these affect interpretations of success
• Evaluate outcomes of systematic decision-making processes that incorporate socioecological complexity (e.g. structured decision-making, adaptive management).
However, it can be difficult to identify specific indicators of success and negotiate trade-offs among multiple, potentially competing, desirable outcomes.
• Who gets to define what counts as conservation success?
• What ecological and social outcomes do we measure, why, and using which metrics?
• When we have information on ecological and social outcomes, how do we use it to evaluate whether a conservation policy, programme or institution has been successful?
• Who makes policy and operational decisions?
• Who holds decision makers to account, and how?
These questions are especially relevant as landscapes, species assemblages, and social values regarding the purposes of conservation change due to deliberate human interventions (e.g. land use designation, species recovery efforts, reintroductions, or translocations) and climate change (e.g. community composition or species range shifts).
Policies, programmes, and institutions that cannot flexibly adapt to such changes risk becoming obsolete by pursuing objectives that are no longer ecologically feasible or socially desirable. Moreover, failing to adequately accommodate ecological and social change can negatively impact biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human health and livelihoods. High-profile examples include: efforts to recover populations of economically, culturally, and ecologically important species such as white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in North America, brown bears (Ursos arctos) in Scandinavia, elephants (Loxodonta africana) in sub-Saharan Africa, or tigers (Panthera tigris) in parts of India, which have now become “too successful”; and costly but futile attempts to eradicate non-native species without fully evaluating the ecological, economic, and cultural impacts of those species or unintended consequences of eradication attempts.
Systematically detailing and comparing diverse examples of how to define, measure, and evaluate conservation success would provide valuable opportunities to learn across socioecological contexts about what does and does not work, by which measures. We invite researchers and practitioners to submit manuscripts presenting empirical findings, for example individual or comparative case studies, systematic reviews, and longitudinal studies, as well as perspectives proposing new, practically orientated ways of defining, measuring, or evaluating conservation success. We are particularly interested in contributions that focus on identifying and evaluating outcomes, not solely describing how governance or management processes operate.
Articles may cover any species, ecosystems, or landscapes. Suitable articles might:
• Describe policies or programmes that have succeeded or failed, by which measures
• Elaborate on indicators used to measure success, pros and cons of those indicators, additional indicators that are currently missing, and why including them would be an improvement
• Reveal factors influencing the ability of conservation institutions or processes to adapt and survive over time (i.e. viability)
• Identify ecological or social leverage points that affect outcomes
• Describe contours of conflict among stakeholders, and how these affect interpretations of success
• Evaluate outcomes of systematic decision-making processes that incorporate socioecological complexity (e.g. structured decision-making, adaptive management).
Keywords: governance, impact measurement, metrics and evaluation, accountability, socioecological systems
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
