Translating Conservation Research to Actual Conservation

From Conservation Magazine:

It’s easy to forget sometimes that the mammoth time, effort, and money spent on scientific research actually does have a point. We hope, as we engage in all that work, that it will actually yield results that we can, you know, use. But one tiny branch of research has shown in the past that people whose job is to engage in environmental management very rarely actually listen to the advice of the scientists working in their fields. There is a disconnect, it seems, between research and real-world application.

A new study, published this month in Conservation Biology, looked a bit deeper into that disconnect. Researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology conducted a survey of 92 conservation managers from 26 countries (though mostly in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand), to find out how they use or would use scientific evidence to reduce predation on birds.

The participants first answered questions about 28 management interventions that are designed to reduce predation on birds by invasive or problematic species; these ranged from the use of electric fencing and artificial nests to “cat curfews” and predator translocation, among many others. Afterward, they were asked to answer more questions about these conservation practices, only this time while reading parts of the Bird Conservation Evidence Synopsis, a free tool summarizing research on all the various practices the managers were asked about. The average respondent had heard of 57.1 percent of the 28 interventions, and had actually implemented 18.5 percent. Encouragingly, there was a positive correlation between what research has shown to be an actually effective intervention and the number of people who used it—which suggests that the evidence is, to some extent, making its way into the right hands.

See the rest of the article here: http://conservationmagazine.org/2014/08/how-can-we-translate-conservation-research-into-actual-conservation/