Our blog provides news, updates and insights related to evidence-based conservation from the Conservation Evidence team, as well as our partner organisations and others in the conservation community. We're particularly interested in work that uses, or generates, evidence on the effects of biodiversity conservation actions.
To get in touch about the blog please contact Nigel Taylor at nt461@cam.ac.uk. We’re always happy to receive suggestions for new guest blog posts.
Plenty more fish in the… CE synopsis on Marine Fish Conservation!
The Marine Fish Synopsis aims to help researchers, fisheries managers and stakeholders address this exact need. This newly updated version of the synopsis (with additional actions) focusses on one of the main threats, overfishing – the harvesting of too many fish from the sea for populations to sustain themselves – and synthesizes the global evidence for effects of interventions to conserve fish numbers, or reverse the effects of sometimes decades of fish population decline.
“Show me the money!”: Poor reporting of costs of conservation interventions hampers ability to prioritize funds for nature
We reviewed 1,987 papers and found that only 8.8% of papers reported the total cost of the intervention being tested (White et al 2022). When papers did report costs, the reporting was often unstandardized and missing important information… This makes it difficult for conservationists to use this information, as it is difficult to know whether or not the costs are relevant to your circumstance.
New non-English language studies database: increasing the availability of conservation evidence
We are delighted to announce that we have now launched our non-English language database of studies testing conservation actions on our website. This forms part of our freely available Conservation Evidence resource of systematically-gathered evidence designed to help support conservation management or policy decisions…
The Conservation Evidence project — a truly collaborative and international effort
The Conservation Evidence database was created to provide an easily accessible, free, authoritative information resource to support decisions about how to maintain and restore global biodiversity. So far, we have worked with over eleven hundred named collaborators from across the globe, to create the database and to help facilitate a change to more evidence-based practice…
A brand new synopsis for reptile conservation
As we begin a brand new year, we are delighted to announce that the long awaited Reptile Conservation synopsis of evidence is finally here, produced by an international team of authors and advisors. But what actually is a “Reptile Conservation synopsis of evidence”…
Helping practitioners to make and document conservation decisions: the Evidence-to-Decision tool
When undertaking actions to restore habitats or conserve wildlife, we often have to make difficult decisions. Which actions are best to benefit bird species or pollinators? How effective will these actions be? Are they feasible to implement, and acceptable to other stakeholders? To make decisions, conservationists have to use and combine various sources of information […] and ensure that limited funds are used to maximum effect. […] Here I outline a new decision support tool developed jointly between conservation researchers and practitioners that helps to document the evidence and thinking behind decisions.
The biodiversity of marine artificial structures
In this new synopsis of evidence for the Conservation Evidence project, we have summarised the global evidence for the effects of actions that can be taken to enhance the biodiversity of marine artificial structures. We tried to include all the actions that could be taken – whether evidence of their effects existed or not. The actions are split into those that can be carried out on intertidal structures and those that can be carried out on subtidal structures…
The untapped side of science that could boost evidence-based conservation
On a quiet day over ten years ago in Cambridge, I was writing the summary of a paper reporting the creation of roof-top breeding sites for little terns (Sternula albifrons). Many people in the same lab were similarly writing paper summaries for the Conservation Evidence project, but there was one critical difference—the paper I was summarising was written in Japanese…
Reducing publication delay to improve the efficiency and impact of conservation science
Recently, Tom White and Alec Christie spoke to PeerJ about their article Reducing publication delay to improve the efficiency and impact of conservation science. This interview was originally published on the PeerJ blog. Can you tell us a bit about yourselves? We’re both researchers from the Conservation Evidence project at the University of Cambridge. Alec…
Making conservation evidence from citizen science accessible
Francesca is an Ecological Modeller at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, where she works primarily with citizen science data to produce species trends and identify the drivers of biodiversity change.framan@ceh.ac.uk; @Frances_Mancini The UK has a long tradition of monitoring biodiversity through citizen science (Pocock et al, 2015). Since the 1970s hundreds of volunteer-led…