Strategy Development for the Budding Wildlife Conservationist
By: Natalie Rhoades
Tags: Skills Development, Project Management, Strategy, Planning, Conservation

Principles Stand Out

The extensive amount of content to be covered could have easily been made overwhelming and disconnected were an anchor absent. Said anchor was found in the six guiding Principles, intended to guide overall strategy development and consistently remind participants what is and is not vitally important to achieving appropriate objectives and project outcomes. They are as follows:

Keep It Wild

Monarch butterflies migrate in Fall and Winter and aggregate at night to retain warmth. It’s a good *strategy* to ensure survival! || Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash

In essence, the priority of a project should always be conservation impact, defined as

“ measured positive change in biodiversity target results, threat results, behavior results, and contributing factor results ”

These impacts could be:

an improved status of a population e.g. migratory western monarch butterflies (biodiversity target result)

a reduction in harmful direct threats e.g. habitat loss (threat result)

a reduction in behaviors driving threats e.g. replacing native monarch-friendly plant species with non-native ornamental species by community gardeners (behavior result)

a change in what is behind the behaviors driving the threats e.g. improved education about native plant species of community gardeners (contributing factor result)

2. Look Up

An organization’s collective impact of connected conservation strategies is the goal (instead of the collective impacts of unconnected strategies) — when all strategies work together, the impact reaches further!

This principle was easiest for me to grasp when I thought of it in terms of nested strategies. For example, the strategy for improving monarch populations (finest-scope) could be nested within the strategy for improving California butterfly populations (medium-scope), which could be nested within the strategy for improving lepidopteran (butterflies and moths) populations west of the Rockies (largest-scope). It all just fits (nests) so nicely!

3. Listen to the People

The people carrying out behaviors that negatively impact biodiversity need to be part of the conversation in order for their behaviors to be fully understood and to come up with solutions they will participate in. Nowadays, the direct and indirect threats to biodiversity tend to be caused by people and their activities — think deforestation, poaching, and invasive species. Gone are the days where the most influential factors were volcanoes, meteorites, and ice ages.

4. Do No Harm

Seemingly simple, but certainly not easy, this principle aims to minimize any negative impacts on both people and wildlife that conservation efforts may incur. For example, perhaps habitat restoration to conserve an endangered Species A degrades habitat that is important for an endangered Species B… harm! Or, also in this scenario, the livelihood of the local community is negatively impacted because the land being restored was being used to grow lucrative crops… harm!

5. Think Big

Given a specific timeframe, conservationists should strive to maximize conservation impact through their strategies. Nobody has time for the easy-pickings of low-hanging fruit! Reach higher and harder to get the juiciest reward.

6. Look Forward

The world, the climate, and local conditions are constantly changing… and an effective strategy anticipates these changes and accounts for them to the best of its ability — as WildTeam puts it, strategies should be “future-proof”. It doesn’t do a biodiversity target any good if political, technological, or stakeholder changes can stop the achievement of conservation impact.