How to address data privacy concerns when using social media data in conservation science

Social media data are being increasingly used in conservation science to study human–nature interactions. User-generated content, such as images, video, text, and audio, and the associated metadata can be used to assess such interactions. A number of social media platforms provide free access to user-generated social media content. However, similar to any research involving people, scientific investigations based on social media data require compliance with highest standards of data privacy and data protection, even when data are publicly available. Should social media data be misused, the risks to individual users' privacy and well-being can be substantial. We investigated the legal basis for using social media data while ensuring data subjects’ rights through a case study based on the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. The risks associated with using social media data in research include accidental and purposeful misidentification that has the potential to cause psychological or physical harm to an identified person. To collect, store, protect, share, and manage social media data in a way that prevents potential risks to users involved, one should minimize data, anonymize data, and follow strict data management procedure. Risk-based approaches, such as a data privacy impact assessment, can be used to identify and minimize privacy risks to social media users, to demonstrate accountability and to comply with data protection legislation. We recommend that conservation scientists carefully consider our recommendations in devising their research objectives so as to facilitate responsible use of social media data in conservation science research, for example, in conservation culturomics and investigations of illegal wildlife trade online.     

Achieving a real-time online monitoring system for conservation culturomics

Environmental monitoring is increasingly shifting toward a set of systems that describe changes in real time. In ecology specifically, a series of challenges have prevented the rollout of real-time monitoring for features such as biodiversity change or ecosystem service provision. Conservation culturomics, a field concerned with interactions between people and nature, is well placed to demonstrate how monitoring might move toward a network of real-time platforms, given its existence exclusively in the digital realm. We examined a set of considerations associated with the development of real-time monitoring platforms for conservation culturomics and introduce a near real-time platform for the Species Awareness Index, a global index of changing biodiversity awareness derived from the rate of change in page views for species on Wikipedia. This platform will update automatically each month, operating in near real time ( https://joemillard.shinyapps.io/Real_time_SAI/ ). There are plans to make the underlying data queryable via an application programing interface independent of the platform. The real-time Species Awareness Index will represent the first real-time and entirely automated conservation culturomic platform and one of the first real-time platforms in the discipline of ecology. Real-time monitoring for culturomics can provide insight into human–nature interactions as they play out in the physical realm and provide a framework for the development of real-time monitoring in ecology. Real-time monitoring metrics can be processed on private virtual machines and hosted on publicly available cloud services. Conservation now needs an online, real-time observatory that can evolve with the structure of the web.     

Factors associated with preemptive conservation under the U.S. Endangered Species Act

In recent decades, there has been an increasing emphasis on proactive efforts to conserve species being considered for listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) before they are listed (i.e., preemptive conservation). These efforts, which depend on voluntary actions by public and private land managers across the species’ range, aim to conserve species while avoiding regulatory costs associated with ESA listing. We collected data for a set of social, economic, environmental, and institutional factors that we hypothesized would influence voluntary decisions to promote or inhibit preemptive conservation of species under consideration for ESA listing. We used logistic regression to estimate the association of these factors with preemptive conservation outcomes based on data for a set of species that entered the ESA listing process and were either officially listed (n = 314) or preemptively conserved (n = 73) from 1996 to 2018. Factors significantly associated with precluded listing due to preemptive conservation included high baseline conservation status, low proportion of private land across the species’ range, small total range size, exposure to specific types of threats, and species’ range extending over several states. These results highlight strategies that can help improve conservation outcomes, such as allocating resources for imperiled species earlier in the listing process, addressing specific threats, and expanding incentives and coordination mechanisms for conservation on private lands.     

Exploring human–nature interactions in national parks with social media photographs and computer vision

Understanding the activities and preferences of visitors is crucial for managing protected areas and planning conservation strategies. Conservation culturomics promotes the use of user-generated online content in conservation science. Geotagged social media content is a unique source of in situ information on human presence and activities in nature. Photographs posted on social media platforms are a promising source of information, but analyzing large volumes of photographs manually remains laborious. We examined the application of state-of-the-art computer-vision methods to studying human–nature interactions. We used semantic clustering, scene classification, and object detection to automatically analyze photographs taken in Finnish national parks by domestic and international visitors. Our results showed that human–nature interactions can be extracted from user-generated photographs with computer vision. The different methods complemented each other by revealing broad visual themes related to level of the data set, landscape photogeneity, and human activities. Geotagged photographs revealed distinct regional profiles for national parks (e.g., preferences in landscapes and activities), which are potentially useful in park management. Photographic content differed between domestic and international visitors, which indicates differences in activities and preferences. Information extracted automatically from photographs can help identify preferences among diverse visitor groups, which can be used to create profiles of national parks for conservation marketing and to support conservation strategies that rely on public acceptance. The application of computer-vision methods to automatic content analysis of photographs should be explored further in conservation culturomics, particularly in combination with rich metadata available on social media platforms.     

Combining culturomic sources to uncover trends in popularity and seasonal interest in plants

Culturomic tools enable the exploration of trends in human–nature interactions, although they entail inherent biases and necessitate careful validation. Furthermore, people may engage with nature across different culturomic data sets differently. We evaluated people's digital interest and engagement with plant species based on Wikipedia and Google data and explored the conservation implications of these temporal interest patterns. As a case study, we explored the digital footprints of the most popular plant species in Israel. We analyzed 4 years of daily page views from Hebrew Wikipedia and 10 years of daily Google search volume in Israel. We modeled popularity of plant species in these 2 data sets based on a suite of plant attributes. We further explored the seasonal trends of people's interest in each species. We found differences in how people interacted digitally with plants in Wikipedia and Google. Overall, in Google, searches for species that have utility to humans were more common, whereas in Wikipedia, plants that serve as cultural emblems received more attention. Furthermore, in Google, popular species attracted more attention over time, opposite to the trend in Wikipedia. In Google, interest in species with short bloom duration exhibited more pronounced seasonal patterns, whereas in Wikipedia, seasonality of interest increased as bloom duration increased. Together, our results suggest that people's digital interactions with nature may be inherently different depending on the sources explored, which may affect use of this information for conservation. Although culturomics holds much promise, better understanding of its underpinnings is important when translating insights into conservation actions.     

Importance of timely metadata curation to the global surveillance of genetic diversity

Genetic diversity within species represents a fundamental yet underappreciated level of biodiversity. Because genetic diversity can indicate species resilience to changing climate, its measurement is relevant to many national and global conservation policy targets. Many studies produce large amounts of genome-scale genetic diversity data for wild populations, but most (87%) do not include the associated spatial and temporal metadata necessary for them to be reused in monitoring programs or for acknowledging the sovereignty of nations or Indigenous peoples. We undertook a distributed datathon to quantify the availability of these missing metadata and to test the hypothesis that their availability decays with time. We also worked to remediate missing metadata by extracting them from associated published papers, online repositories, and direct communication with authors. Starting with 848 candidate genomic data sets (reduced representation and whole genome) from the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, we determined that 561 contained mostly samples from wild populations. We successfully restored spatiotemporal metadata for 78% of these 561 data sets (n = 440 data sets with data on 45,105 individuals from 762 species in 17 phyla). Examining papers and online repositories was much more fruitful than contacting 351 authors, who replied to our email requests 45% of the time. Overall, 23% of our email queries to authors unearthed useful metadata. The probability of retrieving spatiotemporal metadata declined significantly as age of the data set increased. There was a 13.5% yearly decrease in metadata associated with published papers or online repositories and up to a 22% yearly decrease in metadata that were only available from authors. This rapid decay in metadata availability, mirrored in studies of other types of biological data, should motivate swift updates to data-sharing policies and researcher practices to ensure that the valuable context provided by metadata is not lost to conservation science forever.     

Digital data sources and methods for conservation culturomics

Ongoing loss of biological diversity is primarily the result of unsustainable human behavior. Thus, the long-term success of biodiversity conservation depends on a thorough understanding of human–nature interactions. Such interactions are ubiquitous but vary greatly in time and space and are difficult to monitor efficiently at large spatial scales. However, the Information Age also provides new opportunities to better understand human–nature interactions because many aspects of daily life are recorded in a variety of digital formats. The emerging field of conservation culturomics aims to take advantage of digital data sources and methods to study human–nature interactions and thus to provide new tools for studying conservation at relevant temporal and spatial scales. Nevertheless, technical challenges associated with the identification, access, and analysis of relevant data hamper the wider adoption of culturomics methods. To help overcome these barriers, we propose a conservation culturomics research framework that addresses data acquisition, analysis, and inherent biases. The main sources of culturomic data include web pages, social media, and other digital platforms from which metrics of content and engagement can be obtained. Obtaining raw data from these platforms is usually desirable but requires careful consideration of how to access, store, and prepare the data for analysis. Methods for data analysis include network approaches to explore connections between topics, time-series analysis for temporal data, and spatial modeling to highlight spatial patterns. Outstanding challenges associated with culturomics research include issues of interdisciplinarity, ethics, data biases, and validation. The practical guidance we offer will help conservation researchers and practitioners identify and obtain the necessary data and carry out appropriate analyses for their specific questions, thus facilitating the wider adoption of culturomics approaches for conservation applications.     

Research methods and reporting practices in zoo and aquarium conservation-education evaluation

Zoos and aquariums are increasingly incorporating conservation education into their mission statements and visitor experiences to address global biodiversity loss. To advance knowledge and practice in the field, research is being conducted to evaluate the effect of zoo conservation-education experiences on visitor psychosocial outcomes (e.g., knowledge, attitude, emotions, motivations, behavior). Following recent discussions among scholars and practitioners concerning logistical and methodological challenges that likely undermine the conclusions of such research, we identified and reviewed the methods and reporting practices in peer-reviewed articles published in English from May 1998 to June 2016 that focused on adult visitor samples (47 articles, 48 studies). We examined elements of internal, external, construct, and statistical conclusion validity. Methodological quality of quantitative methods and reporting practices was determined using the Effective Public Health Practice Project Quality Assessment Tool. Each study was coded as either strong (no weak ratings), moderate (1 weak rating), or weak (≥2 weak ratings). The quantitative methods of 83.3% of studies were weak. The remaining 16.7% had methods of moderate quality. Using an existing checklist, we also assessed the quality and rigor of qualitative methods and reporting practices and found that some aspects of these methods were reported more comprehensively than others. For example, 69.6% of articles discussed methods for identifying key themes from the data, whereas only 34.8% reported how data verification was performed. We suggest increased application of intensive longitudinal methods (e.g., daily diary) to strengthen self-reported data, experimental and repeated-measures designs, and mixed-methods approaches. Our findings and recommendations could strengthen and guide the research and evaluation agenda for the field and ultimately enhance the contribution zoos make to global biodiversity conservation.     

Conducting conservation social science surveys online

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is affecting the environment and conservation research in fundamental ways. Many conservation social scientists are now administering survey questionnaires online, but they must do so while ensuring rigor in data collection. Further, they must address a suite of unique challenges, such as the increasing use of mobile devices by participants and avoiding bots or other survey fraud. We reviewed recent literature on online survey methods to examine the state of the field related to online data collection and dissemination. We illustrate the review with examples of key methodological decisions made during a recent national study of people who feed wild birds, in which survey respondents were recruited through an online panel and a sample generated via a project participant list. Conducting surveys online affords new opportunities for participant recruitment, design, and pilot testing. For instance, online survey panels can provide quick access to large and diverse samples of people. Based on the literature review and our own experiences, we suggest that to ensure high-quality online surveys one should account for potential sampling and nonresponse error, design survey instruments for use on multiple devices, test the instrument, and use multiple protocols to identify data quality problems. We also suggest that research funders, journal editors, and policy makers can all play a role in ensuring high-quality survey data are used to inform effective conservation programs and policies.     

Priority areas for conservation of and research focused on terrestrial vertebrates

Effective conservation policies require comprehensive knowledge of biodiversity. However, knowledge shortfalls still remain, hindering possibilities to improve decision making and built such policies. During the last 2 decades, conservationists have made great efforts to allocate resources as efficiently as possible but have rarely considered the idea that if research investments are also strategically allocated, it would likely fill knowledge gaps while simultaneously improving conservation actions. Therefore, prioritizing areas where both conservation and research actions could be conducted becomes a critical endeavor that can further maximize return on investment. We used Zonation, a conservation planning tool and geographical distributions of amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles to suggest and compare priority areas for conservation and research of terrestrial vertebrates worldwide. We also evaluated the degree of human disturbance in both types of priority areas by describing the value of the human footprint index within such areas. The spatial concordance between priority conservation and research areas was low: 0.36% of the world's land area. In these areas, we found it would be possible to protect almost half of the currently threatened species and to gather information on nearly 42% of data-deficient (DD) species. We also found that 6199 protected areas worldwide are located in such places, although only 35% of them have strict conservation purposes. Areas of consensus between conservation and research areas represent an opportunity for simultaneously conserving and acquiring knowledge of threatened and DD species of vertebrates. Although the picture is not the most encouraging, joint conservation and research efforts are possible and should be fostered to save vertebrate species from our own ignorance and extinction.     

Assessing ecological function in the context of species recovery

Species interactions matter to conservation. Setting an ambitious recovery target for a species requires considering the size, density, and demographic structure of its populations such that they fulfill the interactions, roles, and functions of the species in the ecosystems in which they are embedded. A recently proposed framework for an International Union for Conservation of Nature Green List of Species formalizes this requirement by defining a fully recovered species in terms of representation, viability, and functionality. Defining and quantifying ecological function from the viewpoint of species recovery is challenging in concept and application, but also an opportunity to insert ecological theory into conservation practice. We propose 2 complementary approaches to assessing a species’ ecological functions: confirmation (listing interactions of the species, identifying ecological processes and other species involved in these interactions, and quantifying the extent to which the species contributes to the identified ecological process) and elimination (inferring functionality by ruling out symptoms of reduced functionality, analogous to the red-list approach that focuses on symptoms of reduced viability). Despite the challenges, incorporation of functionality into species recovery planning is possible in most cases and it is essential to a conservation vision that goes beyond preventing extinctions and aims to restore a species to levels beyond what is required for its viability. This vision focuses on conservation and recovery at the species level and sees species as embedded in ecosystems, influencing and being influenced by the processes in those ecosystems. Thus, it connects and integrates conservation at the species and ecosystem levels.     

Habitat-tree protection concepts over 200 years

The protection and sustainable management of habitat trees is an integral part of modern forest nature conservation concepts such as retention forestry. Bats, cavity-nesting birds, arboreal marsupials, and many different saproxylic species depend on habitat trees and their great variety of microhabitats and old-growth characteristics. With a focus on insights from temperate forests, we traced the development of habitat-tree protection over 200 years. The idea was first conceptualized by foresters and natural scientists in the early 19th century. At that time, utilitarian conservation aimed to protect cavity trees that provided roosts and nesting holes for insectivorous bats and birds. By the second half of the 19th century, habitat-tree protection was well known to foresters and was occasionally implemented. Knowledge of the protection of large old trees, a special kind of habitat tree, for sociocultural and aesthetic reasons developed similarly. But, many foresters of that time and in the following decades fundamentally rejected protection of habitat trees for economic reasons. Beginning in the 1970s, forest conservation and integrative forest management became increasingly important issues worldwide. Since then, the protection of habitat trees has been implemented on a large scale. Long-term views on the development of conservation concepts are important to inform the implementation of conservation today. In particular, historical analyses of conservation concepts allow the testing of long-term conservation outcomes and make it possible to study the resilience of conservation approaches to changing social or ecological conditions. We encourage all conservation ecologists to assess the practical and conceptual impact of the initial ideas that led to modern conservation concepts in terms of long-term biodiversity conservation.     

A counterfactual approach to measure the impact of wet grassland conservation on U.K. breeding bird populations

Wet grassland populations of wading birds in the United Kingdom have declined severely since 1990. To help mitigate these declines, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has restored and managed lowland wet grassland nature reserves to benefit these and other species. However, the impact of these reserves on bird population trends has not been evaluated experimentally due to a lack of control populations. We compared population trends from 1994 to 2018 among 5 bird species of conservation concern that breed on these nature reserves with counterfactual trends created from matched breeding bird survey observations. We compared reserve trends with 3 different counterfactuals based on different scenarios of how reserve populations could have developed in the absence of conservation. Effects of conservation interventions were positive for all 4 targeted wading bird species: Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus), Redshank (Tringa totanus), Curlew (Numenius arquata), and Snipe (Gallinago gallinago). There was no positive effect of conservation interventions on reserves for the passerine, Yellow Wagtail (Motacilla flava). Our approach using monitoring data to produce valid counterfactual controls is a broadly applicable method allowing large-scale evaluation of conservation impact.     

The species awareness index as a conservation culturomics metric for public biodiversity awareness

Although threats to global biodiversity are well known, slowing current rates of biodiversity loss remains a challenge. The Aichi targets set out 20 goals on which the international community should act to alleviate biodiversity decline, 1 of which (Target 1) aims to raise public awareness of the importance of biodiversity. Although conventional indicators for Target 1 are of low spatial and temporal coverage, conservation culturomics metrics show how biodiversity awareness can be quantified at the global scale. Following methods used for the Living Planet Index, we devised a species awareness index (SAI) to measure change in species awareness based on Wikipedia views. We calculated this index at the page level for 41,197 species listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) across 10 Wikipedia languages and >2 billion views from 1 July 2015 to 30 March 2020. Bootstrapped indices for the page-level SAI showed that overall awareness of biodiversity increased marginally over time, although there were differences among taxonomic classes and languages. Among taxonomic classes, overall awareness increased fastest for reptiles and slowest for amphibians. Among languages, overall species awareness increased fastest for Japanese and slowest for Chinese and German users. Although awareness of species as a whole increased and was significantly higher for traded species, from January 2016 through January 2020, change in awareness appeared not to be strongly related to whether the species is traded or is a pollinator. As a data source for public biodiversity awareness, the SAI could be integrated into the Conservation International Biodiversity Engagement Indicator.     

Quantifying biases in marine-protected-area placement relative to abatable threats

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a critical defense against biodiversity loss in the world's oceans, but to realize near-term conservation benefits, they must be established where major threats to biodiversity occur and can be mitigated. We quantified the degree to which MPA establishment has targeted stoppable threats (i.e., threats that can be abated through effectively managed MPAs alone) by combining spatially explicit marine biodiversity threat data in 2008 and 2013 and information on the location and potential of MPAs to halt threats. We calculated an impact metric to determine whether countries are protecting proportionally more high- or low-threat ecoregions and compared observed values with random protected-area allocation. We found that protection covered <2% of ecoregions in national waters with high levels of abatable threat in 2013, which is ∼59% less protection in high-threat areas than if MPAs had been placed randomly. Relatively low-threat ecoregions had 6.3 times more strict protection (International Union for Conservation of Nature categories I–II) than high-threat ecoregions. Thirty-one ecoregions had high levels of stoppable threat but very low protection, which presents opportunities for MPAs to yield more significant near-term conservation benefits. The extent of the global MPA estate has increased, but the establishment of MPAs where they can reduce threats that are driving biodiversity loss is now urgently needed.     

Evaluating global interest in biodiversity and conservation

The first target of the Convention for Biological Diversity (Aichi target 1) was to increase public awareness of the values of biodiversity and actions needed to conserve it—a key prerequisite for other conservation targets. Monitoring success in achieving this target at a global scale has been difficult; however, increased digitization of human life in recent decades has made it easier to measure people's interests at an unprecedented scale and allows for a more comprehensive evaluation of Aichi target 1 than previously attempted. We used Google search volume data for over a thousand search terms related to different aspects of biodiversity and conservation to evaluate global interest in biodiversity and its conservation. We also investigated the correlation of interest in biodiversity and conservation across countries to variables related to biodiversity, economy, demography, research, education, internet use, and presence of environmental organizations. From 2013 to 2020, global searches for biodiversity components increased, driven mostly by searches for charismatic fauna (59% of searches were for mammal species). Searches for conservation actions, driven mostly by searches for national parks, decreased since 2019, likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Economic inequality was negatively correlated with interest in biodiversity and conservation, whereas purchasing power was indirectly positively correlated with higher levels of education and research. Our results suggest partial success toward achieving Aichi target 1 in that interest in biodiversity increased widely, but not for conservation. We suggest that increased outreach and education efforts aimed at neglected aspects of biodiversity and conservation are still needed. Popular topics in biodiversity and conservation could be leveraged to increase awareness of other topics with attention to local socioeconomic contexts.     

Improving inferences about private land conservation by accounting for incomplete reporting

Private lands provide key habitat for imperiled species and are core components of function protectected area networks; yet, their incorporation into national and regional conservation planning has been challenging. Identifying locations where private landowners are likely to participate in conservation initiatives can help avoid conflict and clarify trade-offs between ecological benefits and sociopolitical costs. Empirical, spatially explicit assessment of the factors associated with conservation on private land is an emerging tool for identifying future conservation opportunities. However, most data on private land conservation are voluntarily reported and incomplete, which complicates these assessments. We used a novel application of occupancy models to analyze the occurrence of conservation easements on private land. We compared multiple formulations of occupancy models with a logistic regression model to predict the locations of conservation easements based on a spatially explicit social–ecological systems framework. We combined a simulation experiment with a case study of easement data in Idaho and Montana (United States) to illustrate the utility of the occupancy framework for modeling conservation on private land. Occupancy models that explicitly accounted for variation in reporting produced estimates of predictors that were substantially less biased than estimates produced by logistic regression under all simulated conditions. Occupancy models produced estimates for the 6 predictors we evaluated in our case study that were larger in magnitude, but less certain than those produced by logistic regression. These results suggest that occupancy models result in qualitatively different inferences regarding the effects of predictors on conservation easement occurrence than logistic regression and highlight the importance of integrating variable and incomplete reporting of participation in empirical analysis of conservation initiatives. Failure to do so can lead to emphasizing the wrong social, institutional, and environmental factors that enable conservation and underestimating conservation opportunities in landscapes where social norms or institutional constraints inhibit reporting.     

Catalyzing success in community-based conservation

Efforts to devolve rights and engage Indigenous Peoples and local communities in conservation have increased the demand for evidence of the efficacy of community-based conservation (CBC) and insights into what enables its success. We examined the human well-being and environmental outcomes of a diverse set of 128 CBC projects. Over 80% of CBC projects had some positive human well-being or environmental outcomes, although just 32% achieved positive outcomes for both (i.e., combined success). We coded 57 total national-, community-, and project-level variables and controls from this set, performed random forest classification to identify the variables most important to combined success, and calculated accumulated local effects to describe their individual influence on the probability of achieving it. The best predictors of combined success were 17 variables suggestive of various recommendations and opportunities for conservation practitioners related to national contexts, community characteristics, and the implementation of various strategies and interventions informed by existing CBC frameworks. Specifically, CBC projects had higher probabilities of combined success when they occurred in national contexts supportive of local governance, confronted challenges to collective action, promoted economic diversification, and invested in various capacity-building efforts. Our results provide important insights into how to encourage greater success in CBC.     

Rewilding in the face of climate change

Expansion of the global protected-area network has been proposed as a strategy to address threats from accelerating climate change and species extinction. A key step in increasing the effectiveness of such expansion is understanding how novel threats to biodiversity from climate change alter concepts such as rewilding, which have underpinned many proposals for large interconnected reserves. We reviewed potential challenges that climate change poses to rewilding and found that the conservation value of large protected areas persists under climate change. Nevertheless, more attention should be given to protection of microrefugia, macrorefugia, complete environmental gradients, and areas that connect current and future suitable climates and to maintaining ecosystem processes and stabilizing feedbacks via conservation strategies that are resilient to uncertainty regarding climate trends. Because a major element of the threat from climate change stems from its novel geographic patterns, we examined, as an example, the implications for climate-adaptation planning of latitudinal, longitudinal (continental to maritime), and elevational gradients in climate-change exposure across the Yellowstone-to-Yukon region, the locus of an iconic conservation proposal initially designed to conserve wide-ranging carnivore species. In addition to a continued emphasis on conserving intact landscapes, restoration of degraded low-elevation areas within the region is needed to capture sites important for landscape-level climate resilience. Extreme climate exposure projected for boreal North America suggests the need for ambitious goals for expansion of the protected-area network there to include refugia created by topography and ecological features, such as peatlands, whose conservation can also reduce emissions from carbon stored in soil. Qualitative understanding of underlying reserve design rules and the geography of climate-change exposure can strengthen the outcomes of inclusive regional planning processes that identify specific sites for protection.     

Exploring the emergence of a tipping point for conservation with increased recognition of social considerations

Despite a common understanding of the harmful impacts of Western conservation models that separate people from nature, widespread progress toward incorporating socioeconomic, political, cultural, and spiritual considerations in conservation practice is lacking. For some, the concept of nature-based solutions (NbS) is seen as an interdisciplinary and holistic pathway to better integrate human well-being in conservation. We examined how conservation practitioners in the United States view NbS and how social considerations are or are not incorporated in conservation adaptation projects. We interviewed 28 individuals working on 15 different such projects associated with the Wildlife Conservation Society's Climate Adaptation Fund. We completed 2 rounds of iterative coding in NVivo 12.6.1 to identify in the full text of all interview responses an a priori set of themes related to our research questions and emergent themes. Many respondents saw this moment as a tipping point for the field (one in which the perceived values of social considerations are increasing in conservation practice) (76%) and that social justice concerns and the need to overcome racist and colonial roots of Western conservation have risen to the forefront. Respondents also tentatively agreed that NbS in conservation could support social and ecological outcomes for conservation, but that it was far from guaranteed. Despite individual intention and awareness among practitioners to incorporate social considerations in conservation practice, structural barriers, including limited funding and inflexible grant structures, continue to constrain systemic change. Ultimately, systemic changes that address power and justice in policy and practice are required to leverage this moment to more fully address social considerations in conservation.