Strategic Planning for Species Conservation: A Handbook - IUCN

Strategic Planning for Species Conservation
Multiple forms of monitoring may be integral to the Actions proposed. For example, a SCS
might recommend that illegal killing of elephants for their ivory be addressed by expanded
anti-poaching efforts. In implementing this Action, it would be appropriate to record the
level of effort expended on anti-poaching activities (e.g., the number of ranger patrol days
per month in a given area), and the number of elephant carcasses detected for a given
search effort. In this example, the measure of anti-poaching effort could be compared with
past levels to determine whether the Action had been performed, while the rate of carcass
detection would provide an indication of whether the Action had been successful in reducing
elephant mortality.
In recognition of this need for continual evaluation of progress and success, each Action
within a SCS should ideally be associated with one or more indicators of success. An
indicator is a description of the conditions that would show that a particular Action had been
implemented successfully. Good indicators are measurable, precise, consistent, and
sensitive. Examples of indicators of success are shown in Table 8.2.
It will often be useful to record not only the indicator (including, where appropriate, the units
by which it can be measured), but also the monitoring that needs to be conducted to provide
the indicator. In many cases, the forms of monitoring that need to be integrated within an
Action will be self-evident once the indicators of success have been specified; in other
cases careful consideration will be needed to determine monitoring needs. In the antipoaching
example given above, success could be measured by recording indicators such
as “(a) ranger patrol efforts increased to X patrol days per km 2 per month; (b) evidence that
elephant poaching has declined”. Monitoring needs might be defined as “record (a) number
of ranger patrol days per km 2 per month; and (b) number of elephant carcasses discovered
per km 2 surveyed per year”. The monitoring needed to provide indicators of success has
not been recorded in conservation strategies to date (e.g., IUCN 2005; IUCN 2006; IUCN/
SSC in press); however their inclusion under some circumstances (especially in local or
national Action Plans) may provide a useful clarification.
Indicators of success may highlight intermediate steps on the path to achieving Objective
Targets, as well as evaluating progress towards the SCS’s Objectives, Goal Targets and
Goals. For example, one Goal of a SCS for snow leopards might be to achieve a stable or
increasing snow leopard population in a particular area, and one Action within such a SCS
might be to resolve conflicts with local livestock farmers. In such circumstances, monitoring
might measure trends in the number of livestock killed by snow leopards, farmer attitudes to
snow leopards, and the numbers of snow leopards killed by farmers. Reduced numbers of
livestock killed, and improved farmer attitudes, are intermediate steps indicating that
conservation activities are having positive effects likely to benefit snow leopards. However,
only evidence of reduced snow leopard mortality would indicate definite progress towards
the ultimate Goal of stable or increasing snow leopard numbers.
Wherever possible, monitoring approaches should be developed alongside the
management intervention being proposed. Monitoring methods will be highly specific to the
species or management intervention concerned. In developing SCSs, participants should
ideally discuss, review and present not only methods for collecting monitoring data but also
approaches to data analysis and interpretation; note that in many cases these can be very
simple and non-technical. In most SCSs, population monitoring is likely to be specified as
an Action in itself, as well as providing an indicator of the success of multiple other Actions.
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