Human Migration,Protected Areas,and Conservation Outreach in Tanzania

A recent discussion debates the extent of human in‐migration around protected areas (PAs) in the tropics. One proposed argument is that rural migrants move to bordering areas to access conservation outreach benefits. A counter proposal maintains that PAs have largely negative effects on local populations and that outreach initiatives even if successful present insufficient benefits to drive in‐migration. Using data from Tanzania, we examined merits of statistical tests and spatial methods used previously to evaluate migration near PAs and applied hierarchical modeling with appropriate controls for demographic and geographic factors to advance the debate. Areas bordering national parks in Tanzania did not have elevated rates of in‐migration. Low baseline population density and high vegetation productivity with low interannual variation rather than conservation outreach explained observed migration patterns. More generally we argue that to produce results of conservation policy significance, analyses must be conducted at appropriate scales, and we caution against use of demographic data without appropriate controls when drawing conclusions about migration dynamics. La Migración Humana, Áreas Protegidas y el Alcance de la Conservación en Tanzania     

Rethinking Tropical Forest Conservation: Perils in Parks

Abstract: According to some conservationists, large, pristine, uninhabited parks are the defining criterion of success in conserving tropical forests. They argue that human residents in tropical forests inevitably deplete populations of large animals through hunting, which triggers a chain reaction of ecological events that greatly diminish the conservation value of these forests. Hence, they believe that removal of people from tropical forests is an essential step in the creation of successful parks and in the conservation of nature in the tropics. This approach can lead to undesirable consequences, however. Forest residents—and rural people generally—are potent political actors in tropical forest regions and an essential component of the environmental political constituencies that are necessary for the long-term conservation of tropical forests. In Amazonia and elsewhere, rural people are defending far bigger areas of tropical forest from unfettered deforestation and logging than are parks, thereby conserving the ecological services provided by these forests and the majority of their component plant and animal species. Moreover, the data are too sparse to judge the effects of forest peoples on populations of large forest animals. The establishment of pristine, tropical forest parks is an important conservation goal, but the exclusive pursuit of this goal undermines the broader objectives of conservation when it identifies forest residents and other rural people as the enemies of nature.     

Community Conservation and the Future of Africa's Wildlife

Abstract: The term community-based conservation (CBC) refers to wildlife conservation efforts that involve rural people as an integral part of a wildlife conservation policy. The key elements of such programs are that local communities participate in resource planning and management and that they gain economically from wildlife utilization. In part, CBC is seen as an alternative to the more exclusionary protectionist policies of the past, which often alienated rural people from conservation efforts. The new approach acts to make rural people a constituency for wildlife and therefore active backers of wildlife protection. Africans, however, are struggling with severe social and economic problems such as poverty, long-standing economic stagnation, rapid population growth, and environmental deterioration. Because of the pressures that Africans face in making a living, the application of CBC may not occur as readily or as successfully as its advocates would hope. It may also be that the approach is being oversold. I use brief case studies from Madagascar, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland to highlight the possible conflicts between rural people's economic needs and the implementation of community conservation. In addition, the CBC literature treats the role of protection vaguely, as it does the question of what might happen if CBC fails to achieve wildlife conservation goals. Community-based conservation is an obvious advance over past practices because of its inclusive philosophy, but if rural people accept CBC because of its economic benefits, they may reject it at some point in the future if a better economic alternative is presented. Thus, CBC programs can work to produce a better relationship between wildlife and people, but only a vast improvement in the lives of rural Africans will ultimately produce a more secure future for the continent's wildlife.     

Impacts of rural to urban migration,urbanization, and generational change on consumption of wild animals in the Amazon

For the first time in history, more people live in urban areas than in rural areas. This trend is likely to continue, driven largely by rural-to-urban migration. We investigated how rural-to-urban migration, urbanization, and generational change affect the consumption of wild animals. We used chelonian (tortoises and freshwater turtles), one of the most hunted taxa in the Amazon, as a model. We surveyed 1356 households and 2776 school children across 10 urban areas of the Brazilian Amazon (6 small towns, 3 large towns, and Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon Basin) with a randomized response technique and anonymous questionnaires. Urban demand for wild meat (i.e., meat from wild animals) was alarmingly high. Approximately 1.7 million turtles and tortoises were consumed in urban areas of Amazonas during 2018. Consumption rates declined as size of the urban area increased and were greater for adults than children. Furthermore, the longer rural-to-urban migrants lived in urban areas, the lower their consumption rates. These results suggest that wild meat consumption is a rural-related tradition that decreases as urbanization increases and over time after people move to urban areas. However, it is unclear whether the observed decline will be fast enough to conserve hunted species, or whether children's consumption rate will remain the same as they become adults. Thus, conservation actions in urban areas are still needed. Current conservation efforts in the Amazon do not address urban demand for wildlife and may be insufficient to ensure the survival of traded species in the face of urbanization and human population growth. Our results suggest that conservation interventions must target the urban demand for wildlife, especially by focusing on young people and recent rural to urban migrants. Article impact statement: Amazon urbanite consumption of wildlife is high but decreases with urbanization, over time for rural to urban migrants, and between generations. Impactos de la Migración del Campo a la Ciudad, la Urbanización y del Cambio Generacional sobre el Consumo de Animales Silvestres en el Amazonas     

Quantifying Plant Population Persistence in Human-Dominated Landscapes

Abstract:  We assessed population performance of rare plants across a gradient from rural to urban landscapes and evaluated 2 hypotheses central to strategic conservation planning: (1) population performance declines with increasing human dominance and (2) small populations perform poorly relative to larger ones. Assessing these hypotheses is critical to strategic conservation planning. The current conservation paradigm adheres to the well-established ecology theory that small isolated populations, particularly those in human-dominated landscapes, are the least likely to succeed over the long term. Consequently, conservation planning has strongly favored large, remote targets for protection. This shift in conservation toward ecosystem-based programs and protection of populations within large, remote systems has been at the expense of protection of the rarest of the rare species, the dominant paradigm for conservation driven by the endangered species act. Yet, avoiding conservation of small populations appears to be based more on theoretical understanding and expert opinion than empiricism. We used Natural Heritage data from California in an assessment of population performance of rare plants across a landscape with an urban-rural gradient. Population performance did not decrease in urban settings or for populations that were initially small. Our results are consistent with a pattern of few species extinctions within these landscapes over the past several decades. We conclude that these populations within compromised landscapes can contribute to overall biodiversity conservation. We further argue that conservation planning for biodiversity preservation should allocate relatively more resources to protecting urban-associated plant taxa because they may provide conservation benefit beyond simply protecting isolated populations; they may be useful in building social interest in conservation.     

Sexual Predators,Energy Development,and Conservation in Greater Yellowstone

Abstract: In the United States, as elsewhere, a growing debate pits national energy policy and homeland security against biological conservation. In rural communities the extraction of fossil fuels is often encouraged because of the employment opportunities it offers, although the concomitant itinerant workforce is often associated with increased wildlife poaching. We explored possible positive and negative factors associated with energy extraction in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), an area known for its national parks, intact biological diversity, and some of the New World's longest terrestrial migrations. Specifically, we asked whether counties with different economies—recreation (ski), agrarian (ranching or farming), and energy extractive (petroleum)—differed in healthcare (gauged by the abundance of hospital beds) and in the frequency of sexual predators. The absolute and relative frequency of registered sex offenders grew approximately two to three times faster in areas reliant on energy extraction. Healthcare among counties did not differ. The strong conflation of community dishevel, as reflected by in‐migrant sexual predators, and ecological decay in Greater Yellowstone is consistent with patterns seen in similar systems from Ecuador to northern Canada, where social and environmental disarray exist around energy boomtowns. In our case, that groups (albeit with different aims) mobilized campaigns to help maintain the quality of rural livelihoods by protecting open space is a positive sign that conservation can matter, especially in the face of rampant and poorly executed energy extraction projects. Our findings further suggest that the public and industry need stronger regulatory action to instill greater vigilance when and where social factors and land conversion impact biological systems.     

Fundamental insights on when social network data are most critical for conservation planning

As declines in biodiversity accelerate, there is an urgent imperative to ensure that every dollar spent on conservation counts toward species protection. Systematic conservation planning is a widely used approach to achieve this, but there is growing concern that it must better integrate the human social dimensions of conservation to be effective. Yet, fundamental insights about when social data are most critical to inform conservation planning decisions are lacking. To address this problem, we derived novel principles to guide strategic investment in social network information for systematic conservation planning. We considered the common conservation problem of identifying which social actors, in a social network, to engage with to incentivize conservation behavior that maximizes the number of species protected. We used simulations of social networks and species distributed across network nodes to identify the optimal state-dependent strategies and the value of social network information. We did this for a range of motif network structures and species distributions and applied the approach to a small-scale fishery in Kenya. The value of social network information depended strongly on both the distribution of species and social network structure. When species distributions were highly nested (i.e., when species-poor sites are subsets of species-rich sites), the value of social network information was almost always low. This suggests that information on how species are distributed across a network is critical for determining whether to invest in collecting social network data. In contrast, the value of social network information was greatest when social networks were highly centralized. Results for the small-scale fishery were consistent with the simulations. Our results suggest that strategic collection of social network data should be prioritized when species distributions are un-nested and when social networks are likely to be centralized.     

Conservation implications of anthropogenic impacts on visual communication and camouflage

Anthropogenic environmental impacts can disrupt the sensory environment of animals and affect important processes from mate choice to predator avoidance. Currently, these effects are best understood for auditory and chemosensory modalities, and recent reviews highlight their importance for conservation. We examined how anthropogenic changes to the visual environment (ambient light, transmission, and backgrounds) affect visual communication and camouflage and considered the implications of these effects for conservation. Human changes to the visual environment can increase predation risk by affecting camouflage effectiveness, lead to maladaptive patterns of mate choice, and disrupt mutualistic interactions between pollinators and plants. Implications for conservation are particularly evident for disrupted camouflage due to its tight links with survival. The conservation importance of impaired visual communication is less documented. The effects of anthropogenic changes on visual communication and camouflage may be severe when they affect critical processes such as pollination or species recognition. However, when impaired mate choice does not lead to hybridization, the conservation consequences are less clear. We suggest that the demographic effects of human impacts on visual communication and camouflage will be particularly strong when human‐induced modifications to the visual environment are evolutionarily novel (i.e., very different from natural variation); affected species and populations have low levels of intraspecific (genotypic and phenotypic) variation and behavioral, sensory, or physiological plasticity; and the processes affected are directly related to survival (camouflage), species recognition, or number of offspring produced, rather than offspring quality or attractiveness. Our findings suggest that anthropogenic effects on the visual environment may be of similar importance relative to conservation as anthropogenic effects on other sensory modalities.     

Environmental awareness and biodiversity conservation among resettled communal farmers in Gwayi Valley Conservation Area,Zimbabwe

This study was conducted in Gwayi Valley Conservation Area in Zimbabwe. The objective was to evaluate the level of environmental awareness raising among rural communities resettled by government in a wildlife conservation area and their behavior and actions towards biodiversity conservation. We selected three communities based on the degree of exposure to environmental awareness campaigns by various government departments and non-governmental organizations. This formed a gradient of exposure to environmental awareness campaigns, ranging from the most accessible and exposed community (Hangano), moderately exposed (Gwayi) through to the least accessible and exposed community (Karna). We used focus group discussions, key informant interviews and structured interviews with 95 respondents in the selected communities from November 2016 to April 2017. Through public awareness raising, a number of conservation groups were established including fire and hunting committees, anti-poaching teams and environmental resource monitors. While these groups were found to be either inactive or less effective in Gwayi and Karna, all were found to be very active and effective in Hangano. Similarly, community behavior and actions that caused biodiversity loss such as indiscriminate cutting of live trees, poaching, streambank cultivation, fishing in rivers with nets and use of sledges were much reduced in Hangano than in Gwayi and Karna. Frequent environmental awareness campaigns played a critical role in promoting biodiversity in Hangano. We conclude that substantial gains can be made in environmental conservation by investing more in public awareness campaigns, particularly in developing countries such as Zimbabwe where financial resources for conservation are scarce.     

Conservation resource allocation,small population resiliency,and the fallacy of conservation triage

Some conservation prioritization methods are based on the assumption that conservation needs overwhelm current resources and not all species can be conserved; therefore, a conservation triage scheme (i.e., when the system is overwhelmed, species should be divided into three groups based on likelihood of survival, and efforts should be focused on those species in the group with the best survival prospects and reduced or denied to those in the group with no survival prospects and to those in the group not needing special efforts for their conservation) is necessary to guide resource allocation. We argue that this decision-making strategy is not appropriate because resources are not as limited as often assumed, and it is not evident that there are species that cannot be conserved. Small population size alone, for example, does not doom a species to extinction; plants, reptiles, birds, and mammals offer examples. Although resources dedicated to conserving all threatened species are insufficient at present, the world's economic resources are vast, and greater resources could be dedicated toward species conservation. The political framework for species conservation has improved, with initiatives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and other international agreements, funding mechanisms such as The Global Environment Facility, and the rise of many nongovernmental organizations with nimble, rapid-response small grants programs. For a prioritization system to allow no extinctions, zero extinctions must be an explicit goal of the system. Extinction is not inevitable, and should not be acceptable. A goal of no human-induced extinctions is imperative given the irreversibility of species loss.     

Human perspectives and conservation of grizzly bears in Banff National Park, Canada

Some conservation initiatives provoke intense conflict among stakeholders. The need for action, the nature of the conservation measures, and the effects of these measures on human interests may be disputed. Tools are needed to depolarize such situations, foster understanding of the perspectives of people involved, and find common ground. We used Q methodology to explore stakeholders' perspectives on conservation and management of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) in Banff National Park and the Bow River watershed of Alberta, Canada. Twenty-nine stakeholders participated in the study, including local residents, scientists, agency employees, and representatives of nongovernmental conservation organizations and other interest groups. Participants rank ordered a set of statements to express their opinions on the problems of grizzly bear management (I-IV) and a second set of statements on possible solutions to the problems (A-C). Factor analysis revealed that participants held 4 distinct views of the problems: individuals associated with factor I emphasized deficiencies in goals and plans; those associated with factor II believed that problems had been exaggerated; those associated with factor III blamed institutional flaws such as disjointed management and inadequate resources; and individuals associated with factor IV blamed politicized decision making. There were 3 distinct views about the best solutions to the problems: individuals associated with factor A called for increased conservation efforts; those associated with factor B wanted reforms in decision-making processes; and individuals associated with factor C supported active landscape management. We connected people's definitions of the problem with their preferred solutions to form 5 overall problem narratives espoused by groups in the study: the problem is deficient goals and plans, the solution is to prioritize conservation efforts (planning-oriented conservation advocates); the problem is flawed institutions, the solution is to prioritize conservation efforts (institutionally-oriented conservation advocates); the problems have been exaggerated, but there is a need to improve decision-making processes (optimistic decision-process reformers); the problems have been exaggerated, but managers should more actively manage the landscape (optimistic landscape managers); and the problem is politicized decision making, solutions vary (democratizers). Although these 5 groups differed on many issues, they agreed that the population of grizzly bears is vulnerable to extirpation, human use of the area should be designed around ecological constraints, and more inclusive decision-making processes are needed. We used our results to inform a series of workshops in which stakeholders developed and agreed on new management strategies that were implemented by Parks Canada. Our research demonstrates the usefulness of Q method to illuminate people's perspectives and identify common ground in settings where conservation is contested.     

Black swans,cognition, and the power of learning from failure

Failure carries undeniable stigma and is difficult to confront for individuals, teams, and organizations. Disciplines such as commercial and military aviation, medicine, and business have long histories of grappling with it, beginning with the recognition that failure is inevitable in every human endeavor. Although conservation may arguably be more complex, conservation professionals can draw on the research and experience of these other disciplines to institutionalize activities and attitudes that foster learning from failure, whether they are minor setbacks or major disasters. Understanding the role of individual cognitive biases, team psychological safety, and organizational willingness to support critical self‐examination all contribute to creating a cultural shift in conservation to one that is open to the learning opportunity that failure provides. This new approach to managing failure is a necessary next step in the evolution of conservation effectiveness.     

Scale Mismatches,Conservation Planning,and the Value of Social‐Network Analyses

Many of the challenges conservation professionals face can be framed as scale mismatches. The problem of scale mismatch occurs when the planning for and implementation of conservation actions is at a scale that does not reflect the scale of the conservation problem. The challenges in conservation planning related to scale mismatch include ecosystem or ecological process transcendence of governance boundaries; limited availability of fine‐resolution data; lack of operational capacity for implementation; lack of understanding of social‐ecological system components; threats to ecological diversity that operate at diverse spatial and temporal scales; mismatch between funding and the long‐term nature of ecological processes; rate of action implementation that does not reflect the rate of change of the ecological system; lack of appropriate indicators for monitoring activities; and occurrence of ecological change at scales smaller or larger than the scale of implementation or monitoring. Not recognizing and accounting for these challenges when planning for conservation can result in actions that do not address the multiscale nature of conservation problems and that do not achieve conservation objectives. Social networks link organizations and individuals across space and time and determine the scale of conservation actions; thus, an understanding of the social networks associated with conservation planning will help determine the potential for implementing conservation actions at the required scales. Social‐network analyses can be used to explore whether these networks constrain or enable key social processes and how multiple scales of action are linked. Results of network analyses can be used to mitigate scale mismatches in assessing, planning, implementing, and monitoring conservation projects. Discordancia de Escalas, Planificación de la Conservación y el Valor del Análisis de Redes Sociales     

Conserving Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function through Limited Development: an Empirical Evaluation

Abstract:  Suburban, exurban, and rural development in the United States consumes nearly 1 million hectares of land per year and is a leading threat to biodiversity. In response to this threat, conservation development has been advanced as a way to combine land development and land conservation while providing functional protection for natural resources. Yet, although conservation development techniques have been in use for decades, there have been few critical evaluations of their conservation effectiveness. We addressed this deficiency by assessing the conservation outcomes of one type of conservation development project: conservation and limited development projects (CLDPs). Conducted by land trusts, landowners, and developers, CLDPs use revenue from limited development to finance the protection of land and natural resources. We compared a sample of 10 CLDPs from the eastern United States with their respective baseline scenarios (conventional development) and with a sample of conservation subdivisions—a different conservation development technique characterized by higher-density development. To measure conservation success, we created an evaluation method containing eight indicators that quantify project impacts to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems at the site and in the surrounding landscape. The CLDPs protected and managed threatened natural resources including rare species and ecological communities. In terms of conservation benefits, the CLDPs significantly outperformed their respective baseline scenarios and the conservation subdivisions. These results imply that CLDPs can offer a low-impact alternative to conventional development and a low-cost method for protecting land when conventional conservation techniques are too expensive. In addition, our evaluation method demonstrates how planners and developers can incorporate appropriate ecological considerations when designing, reviewing, and evaluating conservation development projects.     

Power,politics, and culture of marine conservation technology in fisheries

The term conservation technology is applied widely and loosely to any technology connected to conservation. This overly broad understanding can lead to confusion around the actual mechanisms of conservation in a technological system, which can result in neglect and underdevelopment of the human dimensions of conservation technology. Ultimately, this hinders its effectiveness as technological fixes for conservation problems. Through a process of concept mapping based on key case studies and literature, I devised precise definitions of marine conservation technology and technological marine conservation system. Concerns about the use of marine conservation technologies included unintended consequences, halfway technologies that address the symptoms but not the causes of problems, and misguided techno-optimism (i.e., technology is a panacea that can solve any problem). Technology and technological systems can have power, politics, and culture, and these characteristics can influence the contextual fit of a technology, requiring that technology be thoughtfully created or adapted to the circumstances in which it will be used. Power, politics, and culture inherent in technology can also influence the distribution of conservation risks and benefits and potentially widen gaps in wealth, privilege, opportunities, and justice. Addressing these concerns can potentially be achieved through the better integration of social sciences in marine conservation technology and technological marine conservation system design and development and the application of the social-ecological-technological systems framework. This framework melds key concepts from the socioecological systems framework and science and technology studies. It recognizes as and elevates technology to be a central actor that can shape societies and the natural world. Such a framework incorporates broader understanding, so that the values and concerns of society are more effectively addressed in the creation and implementation of marine conservation technologies and technological marine conservation systems.     

The Limits to Caring: Sustainable Living and the Loss of Biodiversity

Caring for the Earth represents current middle-of-the-road thinking on the relationship between conservation and development. This IUCN/UNEP/WWF document has embraced a purely utilitarian perspective: it considers the conservation and development of natural resources to be the same process. In this analysis, I argue that the goal of creating the sustainable society, as defined in Caring for the Earth , is an unattainable utopia, and that the mechanisms proposed to attain this goal will lead irrevocably to the loss of biological diversity. I consider the history of the concept of sustainable development, and then document the constraints on sustainable use of natural resources. Sustainable use only occurs when both human needs are met and the losses of biodiversity and environmental degradation are acceptable. These conditions are not always met when natural resources are used, and I consider the fundamental contradictions between resource potential and human needs. I conclude by emphasizing that while sustainable use is a powerful approach to conservation, it is not the only one, and the conservation of many species and biological communities also requires a preservationist approach.     

The place of nature in conservation conflicts

Conservation conflicts are gaining importance in contemporary conservation scholarship such that conservation may have entered a conflict hype. We attempted to uncover and deconstruct the normative assumptions behind such studies by raising several questions: what are conservation conflicts, what justifies the attention they receive, do conservation-conflict studies limit wildlife conservation, is scientific knowledge stacked against wildlife in conservation conflicts, do conservation-conflict studies adopt a specific view of democracy, can laws be used to force conservation outcomes, why is flexibility needed in managing conservation conflicts, can conservation conflicts be managed by promoting tolerance, and who needs to compromise in conservation conflicts? We suggest that many of the intellectual premises in the field may defang conservation and prevent it from truly addressing the current conservation crisis as it accelerates. By framing conservation conflicts as conflicts between people about wildlife or nature, the field insidiously transfers guilt, whereby human activities are no longer blamed for causing species decline and extinctions but conservation is instead blamed for causing social conflicts. When the focus is on mitigating social conflicts without limiting in any powerful way human activities damaging to nature, conservation-conflict studies risk keeping conservation within the limits of human activities, instead of keeping human activities within the limits of nature. For conservation to successfully stop the biodiversity crisis, we suggest the alternative goal of recognizing nature's right to existence to maintenance of ecological functions and evolutionary processes. Nature being a rights bearer or legal person would imply its needs must be explicitly taken into account in conflict adjudication. If, even in conservation, nature's interests come second to human interests, it may be no surprise that conservation cannot succeed.     

Pastoral Politics: Gaddi Grazing, Degradation, and Biodiversity Conservation in Himachal Pradesh, India

Two assumptions underlie the current conservation focus worldwide. The first is that democratic governments can restrict human resource use within protected areas, and the second is that human land use for subsistence leads to degradation and is incompatible with the maintenance of high levels of biological diversity. An examination of official policy documents over the past century indicates that Gaddi herders of Himachal Pradesh, northwestern Indian Himalaya, have used political influence to circumvent bureaucratic policies of exclusion and that there is an absence of scientific evidence to support the notion that Gaddi grazing leads to land degradation. Although grazing intensity has profoundly shaped the structure and composition of the Siwalik forests (the Gaddi winter grazing grounds), as demonstrated by transect-based data presented here, deviations from a supposed "climax" community need not constitute degradation. A growing rather than declining cattle population attests to the regenerative capacities of these forests. Within the alpine meadows grazed by the Gaddi in summer, mean plant species richness increased along transects originating at herder camps and extending 250 m north of border camp sites. Intense grazing pressure or heavy manuring by livestock bedded at night are likely to be responsible for the observed low species diversity adjacent to the campsite, but the effect is insignificant at the level of the overall landscape. Interviews with borders also suggest the presence of a sizable, though hunted, mammalian fauna in these high altitude meadows. Recognition of the difficulties associated with implementing restrictive policies, and the fact that human land-use practices need not lead to degradation or to a decline in biological diversity, should lead to more inclusive conservation policies within protected areas as well as an expansion of the conservation focus beyond protected-area boundaries.     

Using Wikipedia to measure public interest in biodiversity and conservation

The recent growth of online big data offers opportunities for rapid and inexpensive measurement of public interest. Conservation culturomics is an emerging research area that uses online data to study human–nature relationships for conservation. Methods for conservation culturomics, though promising, are still being developed and refined. We considered the potential of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, as a resource for conservation culturomics and outlined methods for using Wikipedia data in conservation. Wikipedia's large size, widespread use, underlying data structure, and open access to both its content and usage analytics make it well suited to conservation culturomics research. Limitations of Wikipedia data include the lack of location information associated with some metadata and limited information on the motivations of many users. Seven methodological steps to consider when using Wikipedia data in conservation include metadata selection, temporality, taxonomy, language representation, Wikipedia geography, physical and biological geography, and comparative metrics. Each of these methodological decisions can affect measures of online interest. As a case study, we explored these themes by analyzing 757 million Wikipedia page views associated with the Wikipedia pages for 10,099 species of birds across 251 Wikipedia language editions. We found that Wikipedia data have the potential to generate insight for conservation and are particularly useful for quantifying patterns of public interest at large scales.