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The creation of effective policy and practice starts by framing the problem to be solved. This requires deciding what is important, identifying the current and potential future threats, diagnosing the actual cause of the problems, and identifying solutions, including innovating to create new ones when required. In this chapter we describe various techniques that can be used to frame the problem including horizon scanning, situation models and theory of change diagrams. These can be used to identify the analytical questions and specific assumptions that underpin the assessment of evidence and decision making.

Delivering a revolution in evidence use requires a cultural change across society. For a wide range of groups (practitioners, knowledge brokers, organisations, organisational leaders, policy makers, funders, researchers, journal publishers, the wider conservation community, educators, writers, and journalists), options are described to facilitate a change in practice, and a series of downloadable checklists are provided.

To improve the likelihood of conservation success, donors, policy makers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and researchers are increasingly interested in making conservation decisions based on scientific evidence. A major challenge in doing so has been the wide variability in the methodological rigor of existing studies. We present a simple framework to classify different types of conservation evidence, which can be used to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and biases in the conservation effectiveness literature. We then apply this framework to evaluate the evidence for the efficacy of four important strategies in tropical forest conservation. Even though there has been an increase in methodologically rigorous studies over time, countries that are globally important in terms of their biodiversity are still heavily under-represented by any type of conservation effectiveness evidence.

Expansion of agricultural commodity production is driving rapid deforestation in tropical countries. Several strategies including jurisdictional planning and producer or sectoral‐level sourcing/certification have been used to counter this threat, each with its own limitations. There is growing interest in using jurisdictional sourcing (JS) as a hybrid that combines the best elements of each of these strategies. Specifically, JS involves bringing together key stakeholders in a given national or sub‐national political jurisdiction to agree on a land‐use plan that maintains forest ecosystems while promoting enhanced commodity production on degraded lands. Under JS, a key incentive for this agreement is the prospect of preferential sourcing from supply chain actors who want conversion‐free commodities. As with any conservation strategy, the key questions are what defines JS and under what conditions is it likely to work? To help address these questions, we convened a group of practitioners/experts to develop a theory of change that explicitly defines what JS entails from both the perspective of a given jurisdiction as well as a global markets point of view. We also developed generic objectives and indicators that can be used to measure performance. We then vetted our initial drafts with a wider circle of JS practitioners/experts as well as through a review of relevant literature and against seven case studies. It is our hope that this framework can be used to inform the collection of more standardized data across JS strategies being implemented in different locations and conditions. This data could, in turn, inform more systematic assessments of JS strategies and ultimately, revisions to this theory of change as our collective knowledge improves.

Conservationists often must take action in the face of uncertainty about the costs and benefits of different options. Although this uncertainty can be paralyzing when the stakes are high, there is obviously a cost to inaction as well as action, and decision makers need to be encouraged to act when appropriate. Many other fields of human endeavor such as law, medicine, and public safety have formally developed the “burden and standards of proof” that decision makers have to meet in choosing to take action. In this paper, we review the standards developed in these other fields to help define a similar framework for conservation. Specifically we propose that a conservation decision maker must assume the burden of proof when there is a decision to act that substantially affects others, in which the decision maker has professional standing, where there is not immediate urgency, and where there is some, but not complete certainty about the outcomes of acting versus not acting. Once these initial tests have been met, in situations in which the decision maker is more worried about the consequences of not acting, then a relatively low standard of proof is required for taking action. If the decision maker is concerned with the consequences of acting in error, but the action is relatively reversible, then a medium standard of proof is required. And finally, if there are concerns about the consequences of acting in error, but the action is relatively irreversible, then a high standard of proof is required.

The evolutionary origins of the bacterial lineages that populate the human gut are unknown. Here we show that multiple lineages of the predominant bacterial taxa in the gut arose via cospeciation with humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas over the past 15 million years. Analyses of strain-level bacterial diversity within hominid gut microbiomes revealed that clades of Bacteroidaceae and Bifidobacteriaceae have been maintained exclusively within host lineages across hundreds of thousands of host generations. Divergence times of these cospeciating gut bacteria are congruent with those of hominids, indicating that nuclear, mitochondrial, and gut bacterial genomes diversified in concert during hominid evolution. This study identifies human gut bacteria descended from ancient symbionts that speciated simultaneously with humans and the African apes.

Conservation actions need to account for and be adapted to address changes that will occur under global climate change. The identification of stresses on biological diversity (as defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity) is key in the process of adaptive conservation management. We considered any impact of climate change on biological diversity a stress because such an effect represents a change (negative or positive) in key ecological attributes of an ecosystem or parts of it. We applied a systemic approach and a hierarchical framework in a comprehensive classification of stresses to biological diversity that are caused directly by global climate change. Through analyses of 20 conservation sites in 7 countries and a review of the literature, we identified climate-change-induced stresses. We grouped the identified stresses according to 3 levels of biological diversity: stresses that affect individuals and populations, stresses that affect biological communities, and stresses that affect ecosystem structure and function. For each stress category, we differentiated 3 hierarchical levels of stress: stress class (thematic grouping with the coarsest resolution, 8); general stresses (thematic groups of specific stresses, 21); and specific stresses (most detailed definition of stresses, 90). We also compiled an overview of effects of climate change on ecosystem services using the categories of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and 2 additional categories. Our classification may be used to identify key climate-change-related stresses to biological diversity and may assist in the development of appropriate conservation strategies. The classification is in list format, but it accounts for relations among climate-change-induced stresses.

If a project team is integrating human socio-economic development into its conservation work, there are three options for structuring the project: (1) have an integrated mix of conservation and development ends, (2) use development means in service of strict conservation ends, and (3) explicitly link the project’s conservation ends to broader development ends. Although Option #1 is the most common solution, in this essay I argue that careful articulation of the theories of change behind conservation strategies reveals that it is often the worst choice. Project teams ultimately have to select either conservation or development goals, or risk achieving neither, especially in cases in which there is minimal linkage between the goals. Instead, a far better choice is Option #2 under which conservation agencies and organizations use the resources allocated to them by society in service of strict conservation ends. Under this option, project teams cannot ignore development concerns. Instead, they need to consider human needs in the context of both the threats at the site and their strategies – to use development means to achieve their desired conservation ends. Finally, in situations in which conservation teams need to increase available resources, it may be useful to show how conservation ends can also be a means to help achieve broader development ends over the long-term. Under Option #3, creating a clear “results chain” showing the team’s theory of change enables teams to explicitly explore and make use of the links between human and natural welfare needs, and provide appropriate authorities with the information needed to weigh tradeoffs and make required decisions.

Summary As stated in our original paper the IUCN–CMP threatsclassification will be revised on a regular basis based onfeedback from its users. To this end the critique fromBalmford et al. is both timely and welcome. In particularwe acknowledge the need to improve the classificationof stresses and enhance the guidance that details how torecord those direct threats that also function as stressorsand mechanisms.Nevertheless, many of the criticisms from Balmford etal. are based on fundamental misunderstandings of theIUCN–CMP system and how it is meant to be applied.Furthermore, the matrix of mechanisms and sources pro-posed by the CCF as an alternative has many substan-tial theoretical and practical drawbacks that we believewouldbecomereadilyapparentinfieldtesting.Unlesswesee compelling evidence that the CCF system has beenused successfully in practice and has produced substan-tiallybetteranalyses,wewillcontinuetofocusoureffortson further refining the IUCN–CMP classification withinits current structure. We hope our CCF colleagues—andthe rest of the conservation community—will continueto work with us in this endeavor.

Historically, examples of project evaluation in conservation were rare. In recent years, however, conservation professionals have begun to recognize the importance of evaluation both for accountability and for improving project interventions. Even with this growing interest in evaluation, the conservation community has paid little attention to evaluation design. Recent literature includes some discussion of design, but it has focused primarily on experimental and quasiexperimental design and the use of counterfactuals. Real-life conservation projects, however, operate in complex and dynamic contexts and under conditions of limited resources, which limit the feasibility of counterfactual or experimental designs. There is, in fact, a range of design options to evaluate conservation interventions. The conservation community must educate itself about these options, and how different designs produce different results. This chapter discusses evaluation design alternatives in light of the unique challenges that influence evaluation design selection in conservation. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Funding for conservation is limited, and its investment for maximum conservation gain can likely be enhanced through the application of relevant science. Many donor institutions support and use science to pursue conservation goals, but their activities remain relatively unfamiliar to the conservation-science com- munity. We examined the priorities and practices of U.S.-based private foundations that support biodiversity conservation. We surveyed 50 donor members of the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity (CGBD) to address three questions: (1) What support do CGBD members provide for conservation science? (2) How do CGBD members use conservation science in their grant making and strategic thinking? (3) How do CGBD members obtain information about conservation science? The 38 donor institutions that responded to the survey made $340 million in grants for conservation in 2005, including $62 million for conservation science. Individual foundations varied substantially in the proportion of conservation funds allocated to science. Foundations also varied in the ways and degree to which they used conservation science to guide their grant making. Respondents found it "somewhat difficult" to stay informed about conservation science relevant to their work, reporting that they accessed conservation science information mainly through their grantees. Many funders reported concerns about the strategic utility of funding conservation science to achieve conser- vation gains. To increase investment by private foundations in conservation science, funders, researchers, and conservation practitioners need to jointly identify when and how new scientific knowledge will lower barriers to conservation gains. We envision an evolving relationship between funders and conservation scientists that emphasizes primary research and synthesis motivated by (1) applicability, (2) human-ecosystem interactions, (3) active engagement among scientists and decision makers, and (4) broader communication of relevant scientific information.

An essential foundation of any science is a standard lexicon. Any given conservation project can be described in terms of the biodiversity targets, direct threats, contributing factors at the project site, and the conservation actions that the project team is employing to change the situation. These common elements can be linked in a causal chain, which represents a theory of change about how the conservation actions are intended to bring about desired project outcomes. If project teams want to describe and share their work and learn from one another, they need a standard and precise lexicon to specifically describe each node along this chain. To date, there have been several independent efforts to develop standard classifications for the direct threats that affect biodiversity and the conservation actions required to counteract these threats. Recognizing that it is far more effective to have only one accepted global scheme, we merged these separate efforts into unified classifications of threats and actions, which we present here. Each classification is a hierarchical listing of terms and associated definitions. The classifications are comprehensive and exclusive at the upper levels of the hierarchy, expandable at the lower levels, and simple, consistent, and scalable at all levels. We tested these classifications by applying them post hoc to 1191 threatened bird species and 737 conservation projects. Almost all threats and actions could be assigned to the new classification systems, save for some cases lacking detailed information. Furthermore, the new classification systems provided an improved way of analyzing and comparing information across projects when compared with earlier systems. We believe that widespread adoption of these classifications will help practitioners more systematically identify threats and appropriate actions, managers to more efficiently set priorities and allocate resources, and most important, facilitate cross-project learning and the development of a systematic science of conservation.

Millions of dollars are spent annually on biodiversity conservation projects at natural areas around the world. Managers of natural areas must achieve a balance between taking conservation action, evaluating the effectiveness of actions taken, and monitoring the general status of biodiversity conservation targets and the threats they face. Conservation practitioners often struggle with decisions regarding the allocation of limited resources among these competing needs. Many conservation projects have only a limited monitoring component while other projects have an inexplicably high investment in a single type of monitoring. We offer a conceptual framework to help guide conservation practitioners towards a logical allocation of resources between taking action and different types of monitoring depending on the situation that they are facing. The framework consists of a decision tree that includes an explicit evaluation of three questions: (1) Are there substantial threats facing the conservation en...

There is growing recognition among conservation practitioners and scholars that good project management is integrally linked to well-designed monitoring and evaluation systems. Most conservation or- ganizations have attempted to develop and implement monitoring and evaluation systems, often with mixed results. One problem seems to be that organizations are trying to build their systems from scratch, overlooking lessons learned from the many efforts to develop useful and practical monitoring and evaluation approaches. Thus, we undertook a review of monitoring and evaluation approaches in conservation and other fields in- cluding international development, public health, family planning, education, social services, and business. Here, we present our results for the field of conservation. We categorized the considerable variety of mon- itoring and evaluation approaches into four broad purposes: basic research; accounting and certification; status assessment; and effectiveness measurement. We focus here on status assessment and effectiveness mea- surement. Specific lessons that emerged follow: different monitoring and evaluation needs require different approaches; conceptual similarities are widespread among prevailing approaches; inconsistent language im- pedes communication; confusion among monitoring and evaluation components hinders practitioner ability to choose the appropriate component; and monitoring only quantitative biological variables is insufficient. We suggest that the conservation community continue support of collaborative initiatives to improve moni- toring and evaluation, establish clear definitions of commonly used terms, clarify monitoring and evaluation system components, apply available approaches appropriately, and include qualitative and social variables in monitoring efforts.

Ancient microbial symbionts cospeciated with hominids

Research on the human microbiome, the collection of microorganisms including bacteria, Archaea, and fungi living in and on the bodies of humans, is an exciting new frontier that promises to permanently change both the way human health is understood and how humans think about themselves and their relations with other organisms. We propose that the microbiome also has significant implications for conservation biology and provides a mechanism by which biologists who focus on the human body and on ecosystems can work together and learn from one another. The human microbiome is extraordinarily diverse. Each human has over 100 trillion microbial symbionts (Costello et al. 2009), an order of magnitude more non-human cells than human cells. Although a bacterial cell contains 1000 times less DNA than a human cell, the collective microbial genome contains roughly 100 times more genes than the human genome (Foxman & Goldberg 2010). The human microbiota is distributed in distinct ecological communities that vary spatially and temporally on and within different parts of a human’s body as well as across different human hosts. Cataloging and annotating the function of the human microbiome is the subject of active, extensive research by several well-funded international consortia in China, the European Union, and the United States (e.g., http://nihroadmap/nih/.gov.hmp). The ability to document and explore the human microbiota is the result of new methods for sequencing nucleic acids, including genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. These new technologies allow comprehensive surveys of the composition of microbiomes, their functional capacities, and their physiological interactions with their hosts. Growing understanding of the microbiome is changing what it means to be human. As Turnbaugh et al. (2007: 804) state, “If humans are thought of as a composite of microbial and human cells, the human genetic landscape as an aggregate of the genes in the human genome and the microbiome, and human metabolic features as a blend of human and microbial traits, then the picture that emerges is one of a human “supraorganism.” Those who study human physiology are rapidly adopting this multigenomic perspective. Animal phenotypes, including those of humans, may be better understood as the dynamic outcome of the coexistence of multiple genomes than as a single individual’s genome. We are learning that physiological functions of individuals, such as digestion and immunity, can be affected strongly by the microbiome (Dethlefsen et al. 2007). For example, the intestinal microbiome may contribute greatly to nutrient balance and to the transformation of drugs and other xenobiotics into bioactive forms (Souza et al. 2008). We are also gaining an understanding that disease can result not just from the presence of pathogens, but from the absence or altered composition of organisms in the microbiome. Variation in the structure and composition of the human microbiota is proposed as one of the correlates, if not the driver, of the increased prevalence of disorders such as obesity and asthma (Blaser & Falkow 2009). Although a great deal of research is being conducted on the human microbiome, the professional conservation community appears to be largely unaware of these developments. We suggest that the concepts and methods used to study the human microbiome could be applied to meet conservation challenges such as captive breeding, reintroduction, invasions of non-native species, and undesirable effects of chemicals on native plants and animals. Bringing animals into captivity and maintaining breeding populations is undertaken to protect or increase abundances of declining and rare species. Obstacles to these efforts such as callithricid wasting syndrome, which affects numerous marmoset and tamarin species, including the endangered cotton-topped tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) (Chalifoux et al. 1982), and heliocobacter gastritis, which affects cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) in captivity, may be related to alterations of the species’ microbiome as a result of changes in diet, social conditions, or medical treatment. Successful management of species in captivity may well require managing their microbiomes. For diverse reasons, many of the numerous attempts to reintroduce species have not succeeded. A reason that generally has not been considered is that the microbiomes of reintroduced individuals may differ from those of wild individuals, which reduces the probability that reintroduced individuals will survive. Results of recent work on laboratory mice show that changes in diet lead to substantial and rapid changes in the composition of the microbiota (Faith et al. 2011). This result may provide evidence of one of the ways in which conditions in captivity before reintroduction, including controlled feeding and shifts in diet, affect an animal’s microbiome and subsequent physiological function. Attention to the microbiome of animals slated for reintroduction may increase the success of reintroduction efforts. Differences in microbiomes may affect the pattern and effects of invasions of non-native species. The interactions between non-native and native species may be affected by the transmission of microbiota among closely related species or those with similar diets (Ley et al. 2008). The historically unparalleled movement of people, domestic livestock, wild animals, plants, and microorganisms around the globe is accompanied by increases in novel interactions (Keesing et al. 2010). These movements appear to be associated with another emerging type of invasion, the transmission of infectious diseases of wild animals to humans (Jones et al. 2008). This increase in transmission may be associated with factors including changes in human and non-human microbiomes. Many chemicals manufactured and used by humans, such as pharmaceuticals, recreational drugs, and byproducts of industrial processes and agriculture, are deposited in soil, rivers or lakes, and oceans. There has been extensive research on the effects of these chemicals on wild animals. However, there has been limited consideration of the effects of human-made chemicals on microbiomes as a possible mechanism behind the effects of these chemicals on animals. In particular, the widespread use of antibiotics as growth promoters in the agricultural industry can have a serious effect on nontarget species, including humans, via effects on members of microbiomes (Gaskins et al. 2002). Just as conservation scientists have many exciting things to learn from the study of the human microbiome, those studying the human microbiome are borrowing from studies of ecology (Gonzalez et al. 2011) and evolution (Muegge et al. 2011) that are foundations of conservation science. Understanding of colonization and extinction dynamics may be applied to studies of microbial turnover during host ontogeny and throughout the host’s life. Knowledge of colonization and extinction processes, which can be essential components of a successful conservation strategy, is necessary to understand what are now known as multigenomic organisms. Moreover, concepts that are commonly referenced by conservation biologists, such as island biogeography and metapopulation dynamics, can inform many of the research objectives of those who study microbiomes (Dethlefesen et al. 2006). On a more practical basis, most research on animal microbiomes has been conducted on taxa that have been captive for decades or longer and hence on organisms subject to the selection processes that accompany captivity and domestication (Woodworth et al. 2002). The microbiomes of such organisms represent a small, and likely biased, sample of the diverse microbiomes yet to be discovered. It is now known that microbiome members confer novel metabolic capacities to their hosts (Hehemann et al. 2010). These capacities can be acquired in 2 ways: colonization by a new species or the development of novel metabolic traits by an existing member of the microbiome. Because microbes can easily exchange genetic material, the functional capacities of microbiomes (and therefore of their hosts) may not be highly constrained by the small number of evolutionary processes that affect how new traits appear in monogenomic eukaryotic organisms. We suggest the microbiome research community can learn from emerging insights in conservation biology about non-native invasive species and novel communities. Although there are many incentives for manipulating the genomes of bacteria to increase their benefits for humans, an ecological perspective argues for great caution in such work. The introduction of new genes into a given ecosystem can have unanticipated effects; thus, we can assume there will be unanticipated effects of tinkering with the ecosystems of human microbiomes and those of other species. Humans are dramatically reshaping Earth to serve the needs of a single species, implicitly thinking Homo sapiens can survive on its own. The lessons emerging from studies of the human microbiome reinforce those from conservation biology. Humans must relearn that they are tightly bonded to nature and remember that survival of the human species depends on a wide range of other life forms, whether in our forests or in our mouths.

The practice of conservation occurs within complex socio-ecological systems fraught with challenges that require transparent, defensible, and often socially engaged project planning and management. Planning and decision support frameworks are designed to help conservation practitioners increase planning rigor, project accountability, stakeholder participation, transparency in decisions, and learning. We describe and contrast five common frameworks within the context of six fundamental questions (why, who, what, where, when, how) at each of three planning stages of adaptive management (project scoping, operational planning, learning). We demonstrate that decision support frameworks provide varied and extensive tools for conservation planning and management. However, using any framework in isolation risks diminishing potential benefits since no one framework covers the full spectrum of potential conservation planning and decision challenges. We describe two case studies that have effectively deployed tools from across conservation frameworks to improve conservation actions and outcomes. Attention to the critical questions for conservation project planning should allow practitioners to operate within any framework and adapt tools to suit their specific management context. We call on conservation researchers and practitioners to regularly use decision support tools as standard practice for framing both practice and research. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

A commonly held belief is that if people can benefit financially from enterprises that depend on nearby forests, reefs, and other natural habitats, then they will take action to conserve and sustainably use them. The Biodiversity Conservation Network brought together conservation and development organizations and local communities to systematically test this hypothesis across 39 conservation project sites in Asia and the Pacific. Each project implemented one or more community-based enterprises such as setting up an ecotourism lodge, distilling essential oils from wild plant roots, producing jams and jellies from forest fruits, harvesting timber, or collecting marine samples to test for pharmaceutical compounds. Each project team collected the biological, enterprise, and social data necessary to test the network's hypothesis. We present the results of this test. We found that a community-based enterprise strategy can lead to conservation, but only under limited conditions and never on its own. We summarize the specific conditions under which an enterprise strategy will and will not work in a decision chart that can be used by project managers to determine whether this strategy might make sense at their site. We also found that an enterprise strategy can be subsidized and still create a net gain that pays for conservation. Based on our experiences, we recommend developing “learning portfolios” that combine action and research to test other conservation strategies. Resumen: Una creencia comunmente difundida es que la gente se puede beneficiar financieramente de empresas que dependen de bosques, arrecifes, y otros habitats naturales cercanos y por lo tanto llevarian a cabo acciones para conservar y usarlos sostenidamente. La Red de Conservacion de la Biodiversidad junto a organizaciones de conservacion y desarrollo y a comunidades locales para probar sistematicamente esta hipotesis en 39 proyectos de conservacion en sitios de Asia y el Pacifico. Cada proyecto implemento una o mas empresas basadas en la comunidad, tales como el establecimiento de alojamiento para ecoturismo, destilacion de aceites esenciales a partir de raices de plantas silvestres, produccion de jaleas y mermeladas de frutas del bosque, tala de madera, o la colecta de muestras marinas para probar compuestos farmaceuticos. Cada equipo de trabajo colecto los datos biologicos, empresariales y sociales necesarios para probar la hipotesis de la red. Nosotros presentamos aqui los resultados de esta prueba. Encontramos que una estrategia de las empresas basadas en la comunidad puede conducir a la conservacion, pero solo bajo limitadas condiciones y nunca por si sola. Resumimos las condiciones especificas bajo las cuales una estrategia empresarial trabajaria o no en un diagrama de decisiones que puede ser usado por administradores para determinar si esta estrategia tendria sentido para su sitio. Tambien encontramos que una estrategia empresarial puede ser subsidiada y aun crear una ganancia neta que pague por la conservacion. En base a nuestras experiencias, recomendamos desarrollar “portafolios de aprendizaje” que combinen acciones e investigacion para probar otras estrategias de conservacion.

Although there has been increasing interest in trying to link the livelihoods of people living near natural resources to the conservation of those resources, there has been little attempt to systematically assess or measure this linkage. We develop a conceptual framework for defining the linkage between livelihood activities and conservation. We then develop a scale to assess the strength of linkage across five dimensions: species, habitat, spatial, temporal and conservation association. We test the framework and scale by evaluating 39 project sites in the Biodiversity Conservation Network. Finally, we discuss the relevance of linkage to designing appropriate conservation strategies.

There is a growing debate over the extent to which integrated conservation and development projects are contributing to conservation. One of the chief reasons for this debate is that there are few if any standardized and cost-effective methods for defining and measuring conservation success so that different projects can be assessed over time or compared to other projects in different ecological and socioeconomic contexts. Current biologically based approaches to measuring conservation outcome have a number of practical limitations that preclude their use by typical project teams. As a result, most project teams do not measure project outcome and thus find it difficult to determine whether their interventions are working. To address this problem, we have developed an approach called threat reduction assessment (TRA) that measures project outcome. We explore the background for this approach, focusing on program evaluation in other disciplines, including engineering and public health; next we develop a model of the conservation and development context. We then propose one way in which this approach might be implemented through the calculation of a TRA index. Finally, we present and analyze examples of the approach in use in projects from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and Madagascar. We found that although the TRA approach has the theoretical disadvantages of being a proxy measurement of biodiversity and is subject to bias, it has the theoretical advantages of being sensitive to changes over short time periods and throughout a project site, and of allowing comparison among projects in different settings. Furthermore, it is practical and cost-effective because it is based on data collected through simple techniques, it is directly related to project interventions, it is readily interpreted by project staff, and it can be done in retrospect. Although the TRA approach will need further refinement, it could be an important complement to biological approaches to measuring conservation project success. Resumen: Hay un creciente debate sobre hasta que punto los Proyectos Integrados de Conservacion y Desarrollo (PICD) estan contribuyendo a la conservacion. Una de las causas principales de este debate se debe al hecho de que practicamente no existen metodos estandarizados y a bajo costo para definir y medir el exito de la conservacion, de tal manera que los diferentes proyectos se puedan evaluar a lo largo del tiempo o comparar con otros proyectos realizados en contextos socioeconomicos y ecologicos distintos. Como consecuencia, la mayoria de los equipos encargados de proyectos no llevan a cabo evaluaciones del resultado de estos, y por lo tanto, tienen dificultades para determinar si sus intervenciones estan funcionando. Para atender este problema, hemos desarrollado el metodo de Evaluacion de Reduccion de Amenazas (ERA) para medir el resultado de los proyectos. Hacemos una descripcion del marco de referencia y fundamento de este enfoque, describimos la evaluacion de programas en otras disciplinas incluyendo salud publica e ingenieria, y detallamos un modelo del contexto de conservacion y desarrollo. Proponemos una manera en la que puede ser implementado calculando un indice del ERA. Presentamos ejemplos de la aplicacion de este metodo en proyectos de Nueva Guinea Papua, Indonesia, y Madagascar. Durante nuestro trabajo con el ERA hemos hallado que aunque este tiene algunas desventajas teoricas debido a que es una medida sustituta de la biodiversidad y a que esta sujeto a predisposiciones, tiene las ventajas teoricas de ser sensible a cambios en periodos cortos de tiempo, ser sensible a cambios por todo el sitio del proyecto y permitir hacer comparaciones entre proyectos llevados a cabo en distintos ambientes. Ademas, tiene las ventajas practicas de ser un metodo basado en la colecta de datos con tecnicas simples, estar relacionado directamente a las intervenciones del proyecto, ser facilmente interpretado por el personal de los proyectos y ser posible de realizar en retrospectiva. Aunque el enfoque de ERA puede ser refinado o mejorado, podria ser una herramienta importante al ser usada en conjunto con metodos biologicos para medir el exito de los proyectos de conservacion.

In this paper, I first conduct a preliminary analysis of monthly rainfall data from West Kalimantan, Indonesia that indicates that (1) dry periods periodically occur in this otherwise humid environment; (2) these dry periods are often linked to El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events; and (3) the intensity of these ENSO linked dry periods has been increasing over the past two or three decades. I then examine the economic costs of the 1991 dry period to residents of several small villages near Gunung Palung National Park. Costs I considered included reduced durian fruit harvest, loss of coffee gardens, delayed rice crops, increased water hauling labor, lost wages in the forest product industry, and increased health problems. The total cost was estimated to be between approximately one-quarter and one-half of annual township income. These results of this ‘economic ground truthing’ indicate that even in one of the wettest places of the world, droughts occur and can have serious welfare consequences. To the extent that the increasing intensity of these droughts may be linked to climate change, prudence dictates that policy and decision makers should use these results to plan accordingly.

Conservation actions need to account for and be adapted to address changes that will occur under global climate change. The identification of stresses on biological diversity (as defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity) is key in the process of adaptive conservation management. We considered any impact of climate change on biological diversity a stress because such an effect represents a change (negative or positive) in key ecological attributes of an ecosystem or parts of it. We applied a systemic approach and a hierarchical framework in a comprehensive classification of stresses to biological diversity that are caused directly by global climate change. Through analyses of 20 conservation sites in 7 countries and a review of the literature, we identified climate-change-induced stresses. We grouped the identified stresses according to 3 levels of biological diversity: stresses that affect individuals and populations, stresses that affect biological communities, and stresses that affect ecosystem structure and function. For each stress category, we differentiated 3 hierarchical levels of stress: stress class (thematic grouping with the coarsest resolution, 8); general stresses (thematic groups of specific stresses, 21); and specific stresses (most detailed definition of stresses, 90). We also compiled an overview of effects of climate change on ecosystem services using the categories of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and 2 additional categories. Our classification may be used to identify key climate-change-related stresses to biological diversity and may assist in the development of appropriate conservation strategies. The classification is in list format, but it accounts for relations among climate-change-induced stresses.

One of the most common designs for nature reserves has a limited-access core reserve area surrounded by buffer zones or multiple-use areas (UNESCO 1974; Shafer 1990; Sayer 1991). MacKinnon et al. (1986) divide potential buffer zone functions into two categories, distinguishing between extension buffering that extends the core habitat of plants and animals and sociobuffering that provides goods and services for people. A current challenge is to identify existing land-use systems that can simultaneously fulfil both of these roles (McCauley 1991; Wind 1991). One potential candidate is the forest garden, a multispecies agroforestry system developed (among other places) in villages bordering Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. During a recent socioeconomic study of these forest gardens, I found that they appear to fulfil a socio-buffering function in that they provide a significant cash income to local villagers from various market crops (Salafsky, 1993a). As a part of this study, I also attempted to examine how effectively the forest gardens and associated habitats fulfill an extension-buffering function by looking at mammalian use of this agroforestry system. In this paper, I use

Beginning with the efforts of the National Council of Rubber Tappers in Brazil, considerable excitement has been generated over the past few years among the conservation and development community about the prospects of establishing extractive reserves that can maintain biodiversity while simultaneously providing a sustainable economic return to local peoples and governments (Fearnside 1989a; Schwartzman 1989; Allegretti 1990). This excitement was fueled by an article in Nature (Peters et al. 1989) proposing that the long-term financial return from the harvest of nontimber forest products found in a hectare of Amazonian rain forest far outweighed the net benefits of timber production or agricultural conversion of the same area of land.

Between-group antagonism or territoriality in primates may serve two different but compatible functions: resource defense or mate defense. Females are expected to be involved more strongly in the first, males in the second. The resource defense hypothesis predicts that home range overlap should decrease as defensibility and population density increase, and that females should be involved in hostile between-group interactions. The mate defense hypothesis predicts that between-group relations should be hostile and that males should take the primary role in antagonistic encounters. In a comparative study of 12 populations of 6 Presbytis species in Southeast Asia, we found support for the mate defense hypothesis; only males produce loud calls, between-group antagonism is entirely a male affair, and neither defensibility nor population density determine spatial exclusivity or the level of antagonism. We discuss the differences between our findings and traditional interpretations of territorial behavior.

An essential foundation of any science is a standard lexicon. Any given conservation project can be described in terms of the biodiversity targets, direct threats, contributing factors at the project site, and the conservation actions that the project team is employing to change the situation. These common elements can be linked in a causal chain, which represents a theory of change about how the conservation actions are intended to bring about desired project outcomes. If project teams want to describe and share their work and learn from one another, they need a standard and precise lexicon to specifically describe each node along this chain. To date, there have been several independent efforts to develop standard classifications for the direct threats that affect biodiversity and the conservation actions required to counteract these threats. Recognizing that it is far more effective to have only one accepted global scheme, we merged these separate efforts into unified classifications of threats and actions, which we present here. Each classification is a hierarchical listing of terms and associated definitions. The classifications are comprehensive and exclusive at the upper levels of the hierarchy, expandable at the lower levels, and simple, consistent, and scalable at all levels. We tested these classifications by applying them post hoc to 1191 threatened bird species and 737 conservation projects. Almost all threats and actions could be assigned to the new classification systems, save for some cases lacking detailed information. Furthermore, the new classification systems provided an improved way of analyzing and comparing information across projects when compared with earlier systems. We believe that widespread adoption of these classifications will help practitioners more systematically identify threats and appropriate actions, managers to more efficiently set priorities and allocate resources, and most important, facilitate cross-project learning and the development of a systematic science of conservation.

Conservation projects are dynamic interventions that occur in complex contexts involving intricate interactions of social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. These factors are constantly changing over time and space as managers learn more about the context within which they work. This complex context poses challenges for planning and evaluating conservation project. In order for conservation managers and evaluation professionals to design good interventions and measure project success, they simultaneously need to embrace and deconstruct contextual complexity. In this article, we describe conceptual models—a tool that helps articulate and make explicit assumptions about a project's context and what a project team hopes to achieve. We provide real-world examples of conceptual models, discuss the relationship between conceptual models and other evaluation tools, and describe various ways that conceptual models serve as a key planning and evaluation tool. These include, for example, that they document assumptions about a project site and they provide a basis for analyzing theories of change. It is impractical to believe that we can completely eliminate detail or dynamic complexity in projects. Nevertheless, conceptual models can help reduce the effects of this complexity by helping us understand it.