Contents
A Vision of Transformed Conservation Practice ix
PART I: WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? 1
1. Introduction: The Evidence Crisis and the Evidence Revolution
1.3 Why is Poor Decision Making So Common? 7
1.4 The Evidence Revolution 11
1.5 The Case for Adopting Evidence Use 14
1.6 The Inefficiency Paradox 17
1.7 Transforming Decision Making 17
PART II: OBTAINING, ASSESSING AND SUMMARISING EVIDENCE 29
2. Gathering and Assessing Pieces of Evidence 31
2.1 What Counts as Evidence? 33
2.2 A Framework for Assessing the Weight of Evidence 36
3. Assessing Collated and Synthesised Evidence 75
3.3 Subject-Wide Evidence Syntheses 82
3.5 Rapid Evidence Assessments 86
3.7 Open Access Effect Sizes 90
4. Presenting Conclusions from Assessed Evidence 95
4.1 Principles for Presenting Evidence 97
4.2 Describing Evidence Searches 98
4.3 Presenting Different Types of Evidence 100
4.4 Presenting Evidence Quality 106
4.5 Balancing Evidence of Varying Strength 107
4.6 Visualising the Balance of Evidence 110
4.7 Synthesising Multiple Evidence Sources 112
5. Improving the Reliability of Judgements 133
5.1 The Role of Judgements in Decision-Making 135
5.2 When Experts Are Good (and Not so Good) 135
5.3 Blind Spots of the Human Mind 138
5.4 Strategies for Improving Judgements 142
5.5 Structured Frameworks for Making Group Judgements 154
5.6 Practical Methods for Improving Routine Judgements 159
PART III: MAKING AND APPLYING DECISIONS 177
6. Identifying Stakeholders and Collaborating with Communities 179
6.1 The Benefits of Community-Working 181
6.2 Types of Community Engagement 183
6.3 Identifying Who to Collaborate With 185
6.5 Creating and Maintaining Trust 189
7. Framing the Problem and Identifying Potential Solutions 197
7.1 The Approach to Identifying Problems and Potential Solutions 199
7.2 Defining the Scope of the Project and the Conservation Targets 200
7.3 Understanding the Biological and Human System 200
7.4 Identifying Threats and Opportunities 202
7.6 Identifying Potential Actions 215
7.7 Developing Questions and Assumptions 220
8 Making Decisions for Policy and Practice 235
8.1 What is a Structured Approach to Decision-Making? 237
8.2 Filter Easy Decisions: Deciding Whether to Invest in Decision Making 241
8.3 Preparing to Make the Decision 244
8.5 Multi-Criteria Analysis 248
9. Creating Evidence-Based Policy and Practice 269
9.1 How Embedding Evidence Improves Processes 271
9.2 General Principles for Embedding Evidence into Processes 272
9.3 Evaluating Evidence Use 275
9.4 Evidence-Based Species and Habitat Management Plans 278
9.5 Evidence-Based Guidance 279
9.7 Evidence-Based Business Decisions 283
9.8 Evidence-Based Writing and Journalism 286
9.9 Evidence-Based Funding 288
9.10 Evidence-Based Decision-Support Tools 294
9.11 Evidence-Based Models 297
10. How Conservation Practice Can Generate Evidence 305
10.1 Ensuring Data Collection is Useful 307
10.2 Collecting Data Along the Causal Chain 308
10.3 Incorporating Tests into Conservation Practice 315
10.4 Design of Experiments and Tests 317
10.5 Value of Information: When Do We Know Enough? 322
10.6 Writing Up and Sharing Results 323
PART IV: TRANSFORMING SOCIETY 331
11. Creating a Culture of Evidence Use 333
11.1 Why Changing Cultures is Critical 335
11.2 Auditing Current Evidence Use 335
11.3 Creating an Evidence-Use Plan 338
11.4 Creating Expectations and Opportunities for Evidence Use 339
11.5 Providing the Capacity to Deliver Evidence Use 341
11.6 Training, Capacity Building, and Certification 341
11.7 Learning from Failure 342
11.8 Case Studies: Organisations who Shifted to Embrace Evidence Use 348
12. Transforming Practice: Checklists for Delivering Change
12.1 The Importance of Checklists 370
12.2 The Decision-Making Process 372
12.5 Practitioners and Decision Makers 377
12.6 Commissioners of Reports and Advice 377
12.7 Funders and Philanthropists 379
12.8 The Research and Education Community 381
13. Supplementary Material from Online Resources 387
13.2 Teaching Evidence Use 388
13.3 Building the Evidence Base 388