Our Research

Beyond “best available science”

Conserving biodiversity is critical to the health and stability of our planet, yet we face a persistent disconnect between the production of conservation research, the application of this knowledge to policy and decision-making, and the achievement of conservation outcomes. By analyzing the data available in the reports produced as part of U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) recovery efforts, as well as interviews with people implementing these recovery actions on the ground, we aim to identify knowledge that is relevant and useful for conservation practice but has not yet been embraced by the scientific discipline of conservation. These data will allow us to address the following questions:

1. What knowledge was important for the successful recovery of species that were once endangered but have since recovered?
2. In what ways does this knowledge align with knowledge that was initially thought to be necessary for species recovery?
3. What knowledge should be included in future recovery plans and Species Status Assessments?
4. What knowledge should be considered as ‘conservation knowledge’ that is not currently?
5. What do our findings tell us about how the epistemic boundaries of ‘conservation’ are changing?

Identifying the knowledge that is important for conservation practice but is currently not understood to be within the boundaries of ‘conservation knowledge’ will expand the field to incorporate more diverse knowledges. Our work serves as a case study for understanding ways to expand the scope of what is considered ‘best available science’ in conservation, which could lead to more effective species recovery and improved policy regarding biodiversity conservation

Decision science for endangered species risk assessment

We worked with Bayer Crop Science and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to estimate the range of potential operational, reputational, legal, and regulatory risks associated with compliance with the U. S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). The ESA mandates that the U. S. Federal Government take actions to conserve threatened and endangered species and their associated ecosystems. Critical to the success of the ESA is engaging with the private sector to build understanding of how biodiversity conservation and business practices can be complementary and synergistic.

The evidence-based comprehensive framework assesses pre-compliance and compliance costs. It provides critical value to decision-making in the private sector (e.g. providing cost-efficiencies, reduction of regulatory risks, enhanced stakeholder reputation), but also increases awareness of sustainable practices. For both power and agricultural industries, it is important to estimate the costs of compliance concerning actions affecting species already listed or under consideration for ESA listing. Understanding these costs allows companies to make more informed decisions around regulatory risk and helps to understand protection for endangered species.

Endangered Species Recovery Explorer Tool

We partnered with the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop the Endangered Species Recovery Explorer Tool, which compares different funding allocation strategies for actions to recover endangered species. This work was motivated in part by recognition from USFWS of past critiques of its recovery allocation process.

The Recovery Explorer can be used to evaluate potential consequences of alternative resource allocation strategies. For example, the tool can be used to examine how different allocation protocols, under the same budget constraints, affect the number of species recovered and the number of species for which extinction is averted (broken down by geographic region and taxa); how different funding levels affect recovery outcomes; how different values-based inputs (e. g. , desires for taxonomic representation or regional parity in funding) influence optimal allocation and recovery outcomes; and the effect of uncertainty in technical inputs (e. g. , extinction risk, cost) on allocation and outcomes.

The Recovery Explorer tool is designed to be exploratory, not prescriptive, allowing decision makers to examine alternative approaches to resource allocation by making the important components of the decision process transparent.