Science and Practice: Fostering Conservation Results
From restoring wetlands to managing fisheries, bird science provides insights to help assess and promote effective wildlife and habitat management. Management techniques that are responsive to ongoing research can result in fully functioning ecosystems which sustain the greatest diversity and abundance of birds and other wildlife.
The Adaptive Conservation guide includes case studies of applied Adaptive Conservation Planning in terrestrial, wetland and ocean realms and pointers for practitioners with over 30 specific recommendations.
What is an Adaptive Conservation Strategy?
In a world of diminishing natural resources, it is essential that efforts to conserve biodiversity and manage wildlife habitats be guided by the best available scientific knowledge. Science at its best uses experimental methods to constantly modify and improve the knowledge base; an Adaptive Conservation Strategy is designed to respond to evolving information. Download the complete guide to Adaptive Conservation Strategies. Alternatively, you can download the guide chapter by chapter:
Adaptive Conservation Strategy: Introduction
Adaptive Conservation Strategy: Chapter 1
Adaptive Conservation Strategy: Chapter 2
Adaptive Conservation Strategy: Chapter 3
Adaptive Conservation Strategy: Conclusion
An adaptive conservation strategy has two components:
1. Adaptive management is a decades-old method of natural resource management that integrates design, management, and monitoring to systematically test assumptions in order to adapt and learn.
2. Adaptive Conservation Planning is the process of synthesizing monitoring and assessment data from many projects to develop science-based conservation recommendations that can be shared across projects.
Adaptive Conservation Strategies have focused on monitoring of bird populations because many bird species make excellent indicators of ecosystem health and integrity.
Adaptive Conservation Strategy =
Adaptive Management + Adaptive Conservation Planning
Special thanks to The David and Lucile Packard Foundation for providing the funds for the development of PRBO's guide to Adaptive Conservation Planning.
