Biodiversity's golden rules don't work

SOME cherished conservation principles simply do not work, a review of projects in 11 countries suggests. The study found that educating local communities about biodiversity and encouraging sustainable development do not help conserve species — a controversial finding that is sure to spark debate among conservationists.

A team led by Thomas Struhsaker at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, asked 23 researchers and 13 conservation managers at 16 African parks and wildlife reserves to rate how successfully their protected area prevented species loss. The managers also filled in a questionnaire detailing various features of the park, such as numbers and salaries of guards, extent of poaching and corruption, and the existence of community development or education programmes.

As expected, parks with few people living nearby, good law enforcement, technical and financial support and strong public backing were most successful, the team will report in the journal Biological Conservation. But surprisingly, educating locals about the benefits of biodiversity and establishing programmes to help them protect the park, such as the sustainable use of forest products, did not seem to help.

Struhsaker believes this may be because the education and community development programmes were badly designed or underfunded. But others say the study proves the whole approach is flawed. "Our usual strategies for trying to gain community support are not very effective," says Agnes Kiss, an ecologist at the World Bank in Washington DC. She says the problem is that even when people are taught the value of biodiversity, they will always choose today's meal over possible future paybacks from conservation (New Scientist, 1 March 2003, p 32). "It's hard to educate people to ignore their immediate and individual needs in favour of long-term and/or society-wide benefits," she adds.

Struhsaker says that ideally his team would have measured conservation success by counting the animals on the ground rather than asking park staff, which is more subjective. But "to do it right would take at least a decade and millions of dollars", he says. And in the absence of comprehensive data, his is one of very few studies that have tried to evaluate the success of conservation schemes. "I applaud Tom for what he has done here," says Nick Salafsky at Foundations of Success, a conservation organisation based in Bethesda, Maryland, "We are crazy as an industry for not looking at what we are doing."

Richard Margoluis, also at FOS, says that where projects have been evaluated, the information rarely filters through to managers on the ground. "Conservation practitioners don't read scientific journals," he says.

To remedy this, FOS has spearheaded an effort to draw up professional standards for running conservation projects. Finalised in June last year, these "open standards" have been endorsed by a number of conservation organisations including WWF, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy.

Of the 12 projects so far audited according to these standards, all failed on at least some criteria. Most were ill-conceived and badly planned, and many were poorly monitored and evaluated. Margoluis says that with pressing needs on the ground, conservationists often feel they don't have the luxury of time to critique their own work. "Rather than taking that extra time to analyse what works we just jump right in."

Margoluis hopes that the guidelines will force people to think through projects more carefully. Even drawing up standards has helped conservationists to learn from each other's successes and failures, he says.

"People will always choose today's meal over the possible future paybacks from conservation"

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By James Randerson