Management-effectiveness scores are used widely by donors and implementers of conservation projects to prioritize, track, and evaluate investments in protected areas. However, there is little evidence that these scores actually reflect the capacity of protected areas to deliver conservation outcomes. We examined the relation between indicators of management effectiveness in protected areas and ...

This paper examines the application of information technology to project management in the context of the implementation of management plans for protected areas which now cover some 20% of the land surface of developed countries. CMS, an 'off the shelf' system intended for use on any conservation site, is compared with PMIS, an organisationally based bespoke system in which site and property ma...

The task of incorporating traditional knowledge into the scientific management and conservation of the world’s forests is becoming increasingly important. 2 Internationally, organizations and governments have recognized that forests provide multiple goods and services to both local communities and to the global commons. Managing forests for their multiple attributes thus requires cooperation ac...

There are many barriers to using science to inform conservation policy and practice. Conservation scientists wishing to produce management-relevant science must balance this goal with the imperative of demonstrating novelty and rigor in their science. Decision makers seeking to make evidence-based decisions must balance a desire for knowledge with the need to act despite uncertainty. Generating...

Management decisions for natural resources are not made in a vacuum; the environmental and ecological conditions as well as the socioeconomic and political contexts affect goals, the choice of interventions, their feasibility, and which outcomes are obtained. Although uncertainty is recognized as a feature of natural resource management, little attention has been given to the uncertainty genera...