is conservation science doing its job?

Growing global threats

In 2019 the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) published a report that showed that around 1 million species of animal and plants are currently threatened by extinction. Wildlife populations and whole ecosystems are deteriorating as a result of human activity; shifts in how land and sea is used, direct exploitation, climate breakdown, pollution and invasive species are the highest ranking drivers of environmental change. Most of the Biodiversity Aichi targets (set by the Convention on Biological Diversity) were missed by 2020 and lack of progress is also undermining the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. New emerging threats are being highlighted every year (Sutherland et al. 2019) and whilst we know that conservation efforts ARE preventing extinction (Butchart et al. 2020), it's also well established that a reshuffling of how we interact with nature on a massive scale is urgently needed.

What is conservation science?

Conservation science aims to use empirical scientific method to ultimately prevent species extinction. Williams et al. (2020) recently developed a framework outlining how the topics and aims of conservation research should develop through time to be most effective. They suggest that research endeavor may begin by 1) describing the problem before moving onto 2) understanding the mechanisms causing the threat, looking into 3) the source of the mechanism 4) the underlying drivers and then 5) proposing, 6) designing, 7) implementing and 8) testing solutions. For three groups of species known to have directly benefitted from conservation science, Williams and colleagues look at the literature to see if research followed their proposed framework. You can see from the figure below that it did -

The South Asian Vultures are an especially good example. Dramatic declines were first documented in the early 2000s. The cause of these trends were identified as being the result of poisoning by the veterinary used drug diclofenac. An understanding of how this poison was entering the vulture food web was the focus of early research and once the mechanism was understood, various solutions were being tried and tested - from captive breeding programmes to the production of uncontaminated food source 'vulture cafes' . Ongoing population monitoring suggests the decline is now slowing and some populations are even recovering. Research priorities shifted from threat-focused to response-focused research from around 2007 and this appears to be helping. Similar trends in research priority shifts are found for whooping cranes and procellariform seabirds too.

Despite these promising examples of conservation science in action, when Williams et al. look at the wider conservation science literature (959 articles across 20 conservation journals and 20 years), there isn't a general shift in research priorities over time. We aren't seeing a major move from just 'documenting the problem' to the testing of solutions. But why?

Longitudinal vs snapshot

Their analysis is a broad brush approach - particular conservation issues or threats are not being followed within the literature longitudinally, as the vulture or whooping swans were above. Despite this, the ramping up of solution implementation and testing is not at the scale that we might expect or require from the field of conservation science.

The authors suggest that it could be because the journals included in the sample are conservation journals, and conservation science needs to be interdisciplinary to be truly effective. Perhaps we'd see a more positive trend with a wider journal selection (though the authors suggest not). Perhaps conservation science just isn't as interdisciplinary as it needs to be. Are interdisciplinary research proposals being adequately funded? (a paper in Nature suggests not). Are conservation scientists being given adequate training to truly meet the needs of current conservation problems?

I listened to a really interesting podcast recently by the Zoological Society London (episode 29 - the future of biodiversity conservation - different dimensions of conservation thinking). They talk about the mixed values and ideas of conservationists across the globe based on a 15,000 respondent strong survey on the future of conservation (if you're a conservationist you can take the survey here). They speak a lot about the need for a more integrated approach to conservation training and from my own experiences I agree.

So many routes into conservation science are via the biological sciences, but effective conservation and conservation science needs input from social sciences, economics, political science, geography, psychology, and so much more. I am a passionate conservationist that fits very much into the traditional 'biological sciences' route. I studied Zoology before moving onto an MSc in Biodiversity & Conservation. Although the MSc was more interdisciplinary than my undergraduate degree (I did a particularly awesome policy module), I think there is definitely more integration to be had - it's importance wasn't really emphasised (in my opinion) through the route I had taken. I think my experience of working with NGOs since these initial degrees has certainly helped broaden my skill base and way of thinking, but many scientists go straight from an undergraduate to postgraduate to postdoctoral research positions. At the recent British Ecological Societies 'Festival of Ecology' Helena Slater spoke about the current BSc education system in the UK. Most conservation-linked degrees are focused on biology, ecology and zoology - very few are integrating social sciences, computer sciences or politics. We're still being trained to be biologists/ecologists/zoologists with conservation implications.

Are academic values limiting the potential of conservation science?

Academia values 'impact' through citation metrics and H-index scores. Conservation solutions are often context dependent, local and may not be considered exciting or novel. Research themes are often dictated by what is considered 'sexy' by leading journals and the research needs of conservation practitioners can be left by the way-side (though there is definitely a growing body of research understanding the barriers to this research-implementation gap). Analysis by Williams et al. suggest that solution-based papers were not cited less than threat-based papers, but acknowledge this positive news may be biased - it's somewhat impossible to monitor papers that never get accepted.

Change is happening, but is it quick enough?

Despite these points, there are some great journals with the sole purpose of publishing conservation solutions (Conservation Science and Practice, Ecological Solutions & Evidence, Conservation Evidence ), repositories to aid conservation decision making (conservation evidence and Applied Ecological Resources) and awesome research bridging the gap between academia and conservation (I'm personally a big fan of the work of Bill Sutherland based at Cambridge University and Stefano Canessa at Ghent University).

I really enjoyed this paper because it really made me think. As a conservationist and a scientist I am constantly thinking about how my research can be most useful to the field of conservation. Will my research - a tiny piece of the puzzle - be able to inform conservation efforts? At an individual-level I think this will very much depend on the research topic and at what stage along the continuum of understanding the threat/problem is. We will always need to understand the problem and the drivers behind those problems in order to keep abreast of new threats. But we need to ensure that we are progressing along the framework of threat-based to solution-based research in a timely matter, and there are certainly barriers to this.

Overall I feel optimistic for the field of conservation science. There are certainly challenges to be met, not least a rather large shift in thinking for funders, journals & academics themselves. With a growing societal acceptance for the need for interdisciplinary thinking (my PhD programme has organised an environmental 'sprint' for us this year which embodies everything we need more of), solution-focused research and a real link between research and practitioners, a new generation of conservationists will be better equipt than ever to tackle 21st century conservation problems through science, communication and collaboration.

I'd definitely recommend reading the paper yourself: Williams, D. R., Balmford, A., Wilcove, D. S., (2020) The past and future role of conservation science in saving biodiversity. Conservation letters 13 (4): e12720