Strategic Planning for Species Conservation: A Handbook - IUCN

Strategic Planning for Species Conservation
large whiteboard is ideal since this allows arrows to be easily drawn linking the cards.
Problem trees are much easier to see (and to photograph for future reference) when
constructed on a wall than when laid out on a table or floor.
Problem trees may be constructed by working up from the proximate threats to their drivers,
or down from the constraints to their (multiple) consequences; often a combination of the
two is needed. One method to help build problem trees, and to ensure that all relevant
threats and constraints have been identified, is to repeatedly ask why a particular threat is
occurring (to work “up” the tree from consequences to causes), and likewise to ask why a
factor represents a threat (to work “down” the tree from causes to consequences).
Members of the engineering community often refer to this as “The Power of Five Whys”,
since the root cause of a problem can almost always be identified by asking such a question
over five iterations. For example, when a process (e.g., abnormally high nest predation)
has been identified as a threat to a species, participants might ask why that predation is
occurring (perhaps fragmentation of the species’ habitat has opened up easy access to nest
sites for predators). Next, participants may ask why that fragmentation is occurring
(perhaps roads were built through the species’ habitat), and then ask why those roads were
built (perhaps the area is close to a new housing development), and so on – until the
participants feel comfortable that they have identified the full causal chain that creates the
links in the problem tree. Working in the other direction, a participant may have initially
identified the expansion of housing as a threat. Asking why such development is a threat
can lead participants through specifying that the development is leading to road
construction, which contributes to fragmentation, which in turn allows more access to nest
sites by predators and hence leads to high nest predation and low recruitment. Sometimes
the answers to these successive “why” questions will be straightforward, but in other cases
asking “why” can help participants to understand and describe the threats more fully, and to
ensure that the problem analysis provides as complete a representation as possible of the
threats and constraints impeding conservation of the species. It would be unusual for this
process to identify threats in addition to those agreed at the Status Review stage, but the
process nevertheless provides a useful check that all key threats and constraints have been
identified.
Specifying all the links in the problem tree, from the most proximate consequences to the
most ultimate causes, is helpful because it identifies multiple levels at which Actions can be
implemented. For example, in the scenario described above, Actions might in principle be
targeted at land use planning (e.g.,avoiding construction of more housing developments), at
habitat management (e.g., ensuring roads are constructed in ways which minimize habitat
fragmentation) or at the predation itself (e.g.,through predator control). Chapter 8 provides
real-world examples of such multi-level approaches to what is essentially a single problem.
In developing the problem tree, some constraints may be identified which cannot be
addressed by the SCS, for example because they are immutable aspects of the species’
biology (e.g., sensitivity to infectious disease), or because they fall far outside the ability of
conservation professionals to influence (e.g., political instability within key range States).
Such constraints are often set to one side of the tree, in recognition of their immutability
(see Figure 7.1).
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