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.