Christie, AP, Amano, T, Martin, PA et al. (7 more authors) (2021) The challenge of biased evidence in conservation. Conservation Biology, 35 (1). pp. 249-262. ISSN 0888-8892
Abstract
Efforts to tackle the current biodiversity crisis need to be as efficient and effective as possible given chronic underfunding. To inform decision‐makers of the most effective conservation actions, it is important to identify biases and gaps in the conservation literature to prioritize future evidence generation. We used the Conservation Evidence database to assess the state of the global literature that tests conservation actions for amphibians and birds. For the studies in the database, we investigated their spatial and taxonomic extent and distribution across biomes, effectiveness metrics, and study designs. Studies were heavily concentrated in Western Europe and North America for birds and particularly for amphibians, and temperate forest and grassland biomes were highly represented relative to their percentage of land coverage. Studies that used the most reliable study designs ‐ before‐after control‐impact and randomized controlled trials ‐ were the most geographically restricted and scarce in the evidence base. There were negative spatial relationships between the numbers of studies and the numbers of threatened and data‐deficient species worldwide. Taxonomic biases and gaps were apparent for amphibians and birds–some entire orders were absent from the evidence base–whereas others were poorly represented relative to the proportion of threatened species they contained. Metrics used to evaluate effectiveness of conservation actions were often inconsistent between studies, potentially making them less directly comparable and evidence synthesis more difficult. Testing conservation actions on threatened species outside Western Europe, North America and Australasia should be prioritized. Standardizing metrics and improving the rigor of study designs used to test conservation actions would also improve the quality of the evidence base for synthesis and decision‐making.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | bias; conservación basada en evidencias; conservation evidence; conservation research; decision‐making; diseño de estudio; evidence‐based conservation; evidencia de la conservación; investigación sobre la conservación; prioritization; priorización; sesgo; síntesis; study design; synthesis; toma de decisiones |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Jul 2020 13:23 |
Last Modified: | 27 Jul 2022 08:52 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/cobi.13577 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:162772 |