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Standardized reporting of the costs of management interventions for biodiversity conservation |
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| Authors: | Gwenllian D Iacona William J Sutherland Bonnie Mappin Vanessa M Adams Paul R Armsworth Tim Coleshaw Carly Cook Ian Craigie Lynn V Dicks James A Fitzsimons Jennifer McGowan Andrew J Plumptre Tal Polak Andrew S Pullin Jeremy Ringma Ian Rushworth Andrea Santangeli Annette Stewart Ayesha Tulloch Jessica C Walsh Hugh P Possingham |
| Affiliation: | 1. ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, AustraliaAll authors contributed to the design, data collection, analyses, and paper writing.;2. Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K.;3. ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, Australia;4. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Knoxville, U.S.A.;5. Natural England, Parkside Court, Telford, U.K.;6. School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia;7. ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, Australia;8. School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.;9. The Nature Conservancy, Carlton, VIC, Australia;10. School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia;11. Key Biodiversity Secretariat, c/o BirdLife International, Cambridge, U.K.;12. Israeli Nature and Park Authority, Eilat, Israel;13. Centre for Evidence‐Based Conservation, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd, U.K.;14. Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, The University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, U.S.A.;15. Ecological Advice Division, Scientific Services, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, South Africa;16. The Helsinki Lab of Ornithology, Finnish Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 17, FI‐00014, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland;17. Bush Heritage Australia, Melbourne, VIC, Australia;18. Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia;19. Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada;20. Office of the Chief Scientist, The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA, U.S.A. |
| Abstract: | Effective conservation management interventions must combat threats and deliver benefits at costs that can be achieved within limited budgets. Considerable effort has focused on measuring the potential benefits of conservation interventions, but explicit quantification of the financial costs of implementation is rare. Even when costs have been quantified, haphazard and inconsistent reporting means published values are difficult to interpret. This reporting deficiency hinders progress toward a collective understanding of the financial costs of management interventions across projects and thus limits the ability to identify efficient solutions to conservation problems or attract adequate funding. We devised a standardized approach to describing financial costs reported for conservation interventions. The standards call for researchers and practitioners to describe the objective and outcome, context and methods, and scale of costed interventions, and to state which categories of costs are included and the currency and date for reported costs. These standards aim to provide enough contextual information that readers and future users can interpret the cost data appropriately. We suggest these standards be adopted by major conservation organizations, conservation science institutions, and journals so that cost reporting is comparable among studies. This would support shared learning and enhance the ability to identify and perform cost‐effective conservation. |
| Keywords: | conservation accountancy conservation evidence cost– benefit effectiveness return‐on‐investment contabilidad en conservació n costo‐beneficio evidencias de conservació n rentabilidad 保 护 的 会 计 学 成 本 效 益 有 效 性 保 护 的 证 据 投 资 回 报 率 |
