Evidence based conservation

Question 1

Cochrane

Answer 1

Founded in 93’ in response to Archie Cochrane’s call for up-to-date, systematic reviews

“Our mission is to promote evidence-informed health decision-making by producing high-quality, relevant, accessible systematic reviews and other synthesized research evidence”

• Producing evidence
• Making evidence accessible
• Advocating for evidence
• Building an effective and sustainable organization

Question 2

Evidence-based conservation

Answer 2

The integration of best available scientific information with experience based information, applied in context, to conserve the natural environment

Question 3

Why should we use evidence-based conservation?

Answer 3

• increases use of science and research in practice
• Leads to decisions that are more transparent
• Facilitates collation and synthesis of evidence
• Increases the validity and credibility of evidence available for management
• Reduces biases in information used for decisions
• Identifies gaps in knowledge
• (Hopefully) leads to better decisions

Question 4

Biggest barriers to managers

Answer 4

Relevance - might be un-relatable to management context

Language

Time - how long does it take you to read a scientific article?

Cost/money!

Question 5

“Old” people less likely to change

Answer 5

Likelihood of changing to more effective interventions decreased with experience

They were not more informed about evidence - if anything the opposite

Shows how easy it is to believe you are right

Question 6

What supports strong decisions

Answer 6

• Access to “cost-effective” evidence improves decisions
• Overwhelming evidence that groups make better decisions
• Actual expertise declines dramatically outside narrow field
• Age, number of publications, years of experience etc. does not explain prediction accuracy
• Diverse groups do better
• People who are less self-assured and assertive makes better judgement

Question 7

Challenges to using evidence

Answer 7

• When there is no evidence
• No time to implement suggested interventions
• Not money to implement suggested interventions
• Resistance from some actors/stakeholders
• Requires changes above management level (change laws or structures)
• Constant changes in staff and/or structures
• Illegal activities/disruptions

Question 8

Interventions in reality

Answer 8

Certainty of outcome

Negative side-effects

Expected effect size

Question 9

Summary

Answer 9

Conservation needs to adapt strategies from other disciplines to improve our methods for measuring impacts of interventions

Scientific papers are not used in conservation decisions and might not be suitable either

Summaries of research can be helpful but always difficult to address local context

Groups makes better decisions - especially when representing multiple expertise

Making time for using evidence is difficult