Assessing knowledge needs in conservation practice

This project will reveal whether conservation science is producing the kind of knowledge that has proven to be useful in conservation practice. Conservation practitioners aim to use the ‘best available science’ to make decisions. However, science is a human process influenced by social factors, and so what knowledge is considered to be ‘best’ – and even what knowledge is considered to be ‘science’ – changes over time.

This project utilizes the documents produced for the Endangered Species Act to determine the differences between what knowledge was expected to be useful for the conservation of a species (documented in a Recovery Plan or Species Status Assessment) and what knowledge was actually used for the successful recovery of a species (documented in a Delisting Determination). We will also speak to practitioners to determine what knowledge was useful but was not included in the Delisting Determination.

This will reveal what knowledge was important for achieving conservation outcomes but was not recognized as such at the start of the conservation process. The project serves the national interest in two ways: it will improve the effectiveness of research into the realms of biodiversity conservation, and it will improve the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation practices themselves.

The goal of this project is to explore the dynamics of ‘boundary work’ and paradigm shifts in the discipline of conservation, and how these dynamics affect the discipline’s ability to advance and produce knowledge useful for achieving the goal of biodiversity conservation. Phase 1 will compare the knowledge referenced in the Recovery Plan or Species Status Assessment for each of the 72 species that have been delisted from the endangered species list with the knowledge referenced in the Delisting Determination for that species.

These documents will be coded to identify the types of knowledge referenced, both broad (e.g., biology) and specific (e.g., species diet). The researchers will also document the sources of the knowledge that are included in these plans (e.g., scientific publications, practitioner experience, Indigenous and local knowledge). Through this process they will develop a codebook.

Phase 2 will consist of semi-structured interviews with those involved in the conservation of a handful of species chosen as case studies, which will be analyzed in a similar manner as the documents in phase 1. The knowledge referenced in the Delisting Determinations and the interviews will be compared to that referenced in the Recovery Plans. This will reveal the current boundaries around what is considered conservation knowledge by the experts who authored the recovery plans, as well as how those boundaries have changed over time and whether they circumscribe the knowledge necessary to actually conserve a species.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.