Scientific Advancement And Conservation
Science is a crucial contributor to innovation in conservation. Of course, not all conservation managers are environmental researchers and must rely on the work of others to inform their practices. When researchers determine whether a method is more or less beneficial than the current one in practice, their results are published in a peer-reviewed journal for other scientists to analyze and learn from. These journals usually require a subscription to access. While most academic conservationists have little to no trouble accessing these journals, the actual people putting conservation methods into practice – land managers and other workers – often have neither the time nor the access to keep themselves updated on the latest research.
This study examined the use of contemporary scientific research in environmental management decisions. Researchers questioned conservation practitioners on their knowledge of 28 different methods of reducing predation on birds (an issue that all of the practitioners had dealt with in the past 5 years). They were asked whether or not they believed there was any scientific evidence supporting each different method, and researchers then compared the practitioners’ responses to the amount of scientific evidence in the Bird Conservation Evidence Synopsis – a collection of research synopses – to develop their “overall awareness-of-evidence” score. The practitioners were quizzed again after having read the synopses and asked if they were likely to change their practices based on the evidence presented. The effectiveness of each method was assessed by a panel of 10 experts to help the researchers determine whether the practitioners were already using the most effective methods.
On average, conservationists were aware of 57.1% of the 28 methods and had used 18.5% of them in the past. Practitioners were more likely to use the techniques that the experts had deemed most effective and were more certain of the scientific evidence supporting those techniques. They would change their opinions on 46% of the methods based on the evidence in the synopses. Furthermore, 85 out of the 92 participants would change their use of at least one method. More experienced practitioners were generally not more aware of scientific evidence than newer practitioners, but were less likely to change their opinions about implementing new methods. One explanation for their resistance to using new methods is because they were already using the most effective methods.
The researchers acknowledged some limitations to their findings, based on their sample size and the relative uniformity of the conservationists. They were mostly from developed, English-speaking nations (where the majority of research on evidence-based conservation has taken place). The researchers also acknowledged that they only measured the practitioner’s likelihood of changing and didn’t evaluate whether or not they had actually implemented any changes. Still, the fact that practitioners changed their opinions of nearly half of interventions just by reading a brief synopsis suggests it is valuable to improve conservationists’ access to condensed scientific literature. Such an approach to evidence review is already commonplace in the medical field. This study proposes that it’s time conservationists followed suit.
Avid readers of this website may not find this study groundbreaking. Animal advocates are already used to condensing information taken from scientific studies to help explain the effects of meat-eating on the environment, the human body, and of course on animals’ lives. It is also important for advocates to share their information with others so that they can continue to stay well-informed and strengthen their techniques based on what has worked (or not worked) for others. Incidentally, this has been a main focus of Faunalytics for more than ten years.