Determining the most effective conservation actions for species

Species recovery depends upon application of effective conservation actions. Determining which conservation actions to apply to conserve a species requires an understanding the species' biology, ecology, threats and how different conservation actions impact species and their threats. However, for many species there is no information on what actions are the effective for

conserving them (Christie et al. 2020; Junker et al. 2020). For highly threatened and rapidly declining species, there is often not enough time or enough individuals left to test the effectiveness of actions. Where the information on effective conservation actions is absent, species responses are assumed to be the same as similar species, but this is not always true

and can have cause further declines. Conservation practitioners also often do not have time to publish the impact of their actions; so key evidence is often missed. This project aims to gather all available evidence on species conservation action effectiveness in order to determine (1) what predicts the

effectiveness of conservation actions for different species and groups of species across a range of taxa, (2) whether/when inference from similar species is appropriate and which information is needed to determine this and (3) use the derived models and variables to predict the most suitable conservation actions for a wide range of species which currently lack

information on effective conservation actions for the first time. The known and predicted effective conservation actions for species would then be compared against in-place and needed actions identified to determine where these differ and why.