Strategic Planning for Species Conservation: A Handbook - IUCN

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4. Who should be involved?
Another important point is that involving range State stakeholders in the Status Review part
of the process can help to highlight the need for better data-gathering using standard
methods, in those cases where their own data are out of date or based on suboptimal
methods.
Finally, the Status Review part of the process contains the vitally important threat analysis,
and range State agency participants (and other local stakeholders) often have good data on
threats that are not necessarily available to other species specialists. There will often not
be species specialists working in (or even familiar with) all range States, and so range State
government participants may be the only source of data for some countries or parts of some
countries (see Chapter 6 for a discussion of maintaining and coding data reliability when
data come from multiple participants). Furthermore, when the threat analysis is expanded
to a broader problem analysis, identifying both threats and constraints (direct and indirect
threats) (prior to drafting the Objectives), range State participants (especially range State
authorities at various levels) usually have the best first hand knowledge about what
prevents them from achieving Goals (see section 7.2 for more detail).
Clearly, the relevant specialists for the species concerned have to be involved in developing
the Vision, Goals, Objectives, and Actions. In addition to being stakeholders in their own
right, such species specialists are often best placed to formulate the “species’ eye view” that
the overall SCS should promote in order to best conserve the species. However, it bears
repeating that it is also vitally important for range State stakeholders to be involved in this
process because of their understanding of the context in which the conservation activities
will be conducted, and because they (and not IUCN/SSC) are mandated to implement
Actions, so their participation is a prerequisite to achieve the sense of ownership and
responsibility for the SCS that leads to an enabling political environment and to
implementation of the SCS’s recommendations.
4.2 Identifying stakeholders and participants for the SCS process
The identification of appropriate stakeholders as potential participants in a SCS workshop is
a crucial early design step.
At a strategic level, if the right people with the right kinds of information and the proper
motivation for participating are present at the workshop, significant progress can be made
on crafting truly effective strategies and plans. Ensuring a good balance of different
stakeholders is also crucial: a SCS workshop should not be dominated by any one group
(e.g., academics or NGO staff). Participants should include people with the authority to
make conservation decisions from the range States, as well as range State resource
managers (e.g., national park directors), not least because such senior officials can also
motivate their staff to put the SCS into practice and put in place monitoring measures to see
how well the plan is being implemented.
IUCN/SSC Specialist Groups are often well placed to identify suitable participants because
of their broad membership, which typically encompasses people from multiple range States,
including resource managers, all or most of the big international NGOs, and a range of
specialists on relevant subjects (from taxonomy and ecology to practical wildlife
management and law enforcement).
At the range-wide or regional level, SCSs are best developed at workshops attended by
higher-level range State government representatives, species specialists, other