Conservation in Practice: Overcoming Obstacles to Implementation

Abstract

Research in conservation biology should be aimed at the development of a sound scientific basis for the preservation, management, and restoration of biotic diversity. Tests of both specific and general hypotheses are necessary to inform conservation planning. Because conservation biology is partly a crisis discipline, some research projects focus on the viability of a particular population, species, or ecosystem. Others address the long-term conservation goal of the ecologically sustainable coexistence of human beings with other species by investigating pertinent broad ecological patterns or processes. Regardless of their research emphasis, conservation biologists inevitably grapple with the challenge of integrating their science into public policy. Communication between academics and practitioners undeniably is key to incorporating knowledge gained from research into conservation planning and land management (Meffe 1998). Does the academic's research orientation itself also bear upon his or her ability to transform conservation science into policy? In the wake of recent calls for cohesion between basic and applied science (Orians 1997) and between academics and practitioners (Meffe 1998), our research group at the Center for Conservation Biology asked whether the motivation for initiating various conservation projects affected the projects' likelihood of success. Our group includes more than 20 conservation scientists whose individual and team research over the past 15 years has been driven both by pressing conservation situations and by less immediate but equally germane issues in conservation biology. Recognizing that no single objective applies to all conservation efforts, we examined how success was defined at the inception of a project and which projects met their own definition of success. We identified several pervasive impedinments to success and