New Unified Global Classifications of Threats and Conservation Actions - the Foundation of a Systematic Conservation Science

Nick Salafsky, Alison Stattersfield, Daniel Salzer and Craig Hilton-Taylor

Foundations of Success/Conservation Measures Partnership (1), Birdlife International/IUCN Species Survival Commission (2), The Nature Conservancy/Conservation Measures Partnership (3), IUCN Species Survival Commission

There is growing interest in promoting more systematic information
sharing and learning between conservation practitioners in and across
different organizations. Ultimately, these efforts are about trying to
develop a body of knowledge and practice about how to make conservation
more effective - to create a science of conservation.  An unglamorous
yet essential foundation of any science is a standard nomenclature.  If
we want to create general principles for conservation work, we need a
common language.  In recent years, the IUCN Species Survival Commission
and the Conservation Measures Partnership have each independently
developed standard classifications for direct threats and for
conservation actions.  Over the past year, we have been working to bring
together these separate efforts to produce one unified set of
classifications.  Here we present the results of this work.  It is our
hope that these standard classifications will help field project teams
identify threats and design appropriate actions.  More importantly,
these taxonomies will allow practitioners to search a database of
conservation projects and find projects facing similar threats or using
similar actions and thus to learn how, why, and when certain actions
succeed in abating particular threats - to facilitate cross-project
learning and ultimately develop a full-fledged science of conservation.
The classifications are available at www.conservationmeasures.org.

corresponding author:
Nick Salafsky
Foundations of Success
4109 Maryland Ave
Bethesda MD 20816 USA
301-263-2784
Nick@FOSonline.org