Enhancing communication between conservation biologists and conservation practitioners: Letter from the Conservation Front Line

Science for implementation: the roles, experiences, and perceptions of practitioners involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

In the climate change arena, the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), while not policy prescriptive, are important for informing international negotiations and the decisions of policy and practice communities. Since 2015, when the Paris Agreement was adopted, there has been an increasing demand for climate action and calls for the inclusion of a broader base of stakeholders in global assessments. We use publicly available information on IPCC authors, and the results of a survey (n = 29) and interviews (n = 17) with authors who apply science in practice (practitioners), to examine their roles, experiences, and challenges in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment. The results show that while practitioners form only a very small proportion of authors, they contribute real-world experience, including the translation of academic language into meaningful messages for decision-makers. Although familiar with working at the interface of science and practice, study participants described barriers to their participation and shared several recommendations for improving the relevance, uptake, and timeliness of IPCC assessments, and practitioner participation. Our findings indicate that IPCC assessments provide an evidence base to support action on climate change, and due to their skill set, practitioners are often able to make contributions that allow for greater accessibility by decision-makers.

Building strong relationships between conservation genetics and primary industry leads to mutually beneficial genomic advances

Several reviews in the past decade have heralded the benefits of embracing high-throughput sequencing technologies to inform conservation policy and the management of threatened species, but few have offered practical advice on how to expedite the transition from conservation genetics to conservation genomics. Here, we argue that an effective and efficient way to navigate this transition is to capitalize on emerging synergies between conservation genetics and primary industry (e.g., agriculture, fisheries, forestry and horticulture). Here, we demonstrate how building strong relationships between conservation geneticists and primary industry scientists is leading to mutually-beneficial outcomes for both disciplines. Based on our collective experience as collaborative New Zealand-based scientists, we also provide insight for forging these cross-sector relationships.

Assessing the impact of removal scenarios on population viability of a threatened, long-lived avian scavenger

The removal of eggs or chicks from wild populations to create captive populations, reinforce free-ranging populations or reintroduce species into the wild is a restoration tool that requires an assessment of potential detrimental effects upon the donor population. This is an absolute prerequisite when wild donor populations are scarce and small. Here, we forecast the population trend of the largest European population of the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus) over the next 30 years under different demographic and management scenarios (removal of eggs, chicks or fledglings). Projections derived from the combination of a PDP model (Population Dynamic P-system) and a Box-Behnken design would lead to a decline in 77% of all 57 scenarios analysed. Among the 13 scenarios predicting a population increase, only 4 seem realistic in terms of growth rate (0.04%-1.01%), at least if current age at first breeding and productivity would remain constant over time. Our simulations thus suggest that most extraction scenarios would have detrimental effects on the demography of the donor population. Release of captive-born young or removal of only the second hatched chick for subsequent captive rearing and translocation into the wild appear to represent much better supplementation and reintroduction options in this threatened species.