Abstract
When developing a novel conservation assessment, tradeoffs between generality and precision, and between realism and simplicity, will inevitably need to be made. Engaging potential end-users during development can help developers navigate these tradeoffs to maximise uptake. End-user engagement can also produce feedback about external perceptions, allowing changes to be made prior to the final design. Here, we report on end-user consultations about the species recovery assessment method introduced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is a new component of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. This species recovery assessment was originally called the 'Green List of Species.' We conducted two types of end-user consultation over a two-year period—1) key informant interviews, and 2) technical consultations about the details of the assessment method, including identification of factors that increased the amount of time required to conduct an assessment. A main finding from the key informant interviews was that the name 'Green List of Species' was inappropriate for the assessment, given the potential for misunderstanding the scope of the assessment and potential confusion with the IUCN Green List of Protected and Conserved Areas. We therefore proposed the name 'Green Status of Species', a suggestion accepted by IUCN. A repeated concern in key informant interviews was the perception that the species recovery assessments were complex, indicating a potential tradeoff between scientific rigour and simplicity. To address this concern, we used feedback from the technical consultations to identify assessment steps which were most in need of refinement, and implemented solutions and made recommendations to streamline those steps (e.g., we found that the number of spatial units used in an assessment was positively correlated with assessment time, and increased greatly when more than 15 spatial units were used). This process of end-user engagement makes it much more likely that the Green Status of Species will be used in conservation communication, monitoring, and decision-making—helping achieve the ultimate goal of biodiversity recovery.
Highlights
Participatory approaches, which widen a decision-making process to include stakeholders who will potentially be affected by the outcome, are becoming increasingly common in biodiversity conservation science and practice (Jones-Walters and Cil 2011; Sterling et al 2017)
Conservation assessments are based on models of how systems and processes function, and models must strike a balance between generality, precision, and realism (Levins 1966)
We identified two classes of end-user—1) people who would need to generate International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) species recovery assessments at the global level, and 2) people who would generally not be involved in producing assessments, but might use the assessments to inform some aspect of their organisation’s operations
Summary
Participatory approaches, which widen a decision-making process to include stakeholders who will potentially be affected by the outcome, are becoming increasingly common in biodiversity conservation science and practice (Jones-Walters and Cil 2011; Sterling et al 2017). When developing novel conservation methods, one important group of stakeholders is end-users, who will need to use the method to generate data and/or use the data generated by the method to inform decisions (e.g., Maxwell et al 2018). Participatory approaches that engage end-users can be extremely useful in understanding and navigating the tradeoffs that inevitably arise when designing conservation assessments for use at the global level. Designing a new global conservation assessment requires a delicate balance of these four qualities, and because increases in one quality generally come at the expense of at least one of the others, it is useful to engage potential end-users to learn which qualities they value
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