1. Conservation Action Planning Measures of Success!
The Essentials

3. Measures Matter!
Tell us if our actions achieving their intended results
Enable adapting, learning, & sharing
Provide Early Warning if things change
Provide transparency and accountability
Secure future funding

4. What You Want to Know Are your strategies working?
Are your threats declining??
Are your targets stable or improving???
Can you correct course if you need to????
Was it all worthwhile?????

5. Measures are embedded Look to your objectives
Look to your Key Ecological Attributes and indicators
Look to your threats table

6. For Example 1. Objectives and work plan (effectiveness monitoring) #
Objectives and Strategic Actions
Objective
Conservation management of all existing 2004 priority communities (PC / Yates / OS) >50ha by 2012
Strategic action
Demonstrate a high standard of ecological management for application across all tenures
Acquire properties with areas of native bush >50ha
Covenant properties with areas of native bush >50ha
Develop culture, infrastructure, mechanisms and practices to support private conservation management
Acquire good information on sound ecological management
Increase amount of habitat for W&Ps by 10,000ha and connect all isolated habitat >50ha by 2012
Restore habitat on geographically and ecologically suitable properties
A monitoring plan is driven from 3 different sources:
Objectives and work plan
Viability table
Threat table
We have a need to track indicators for all stated objectives in our work plan. This provides information driving our adaptive management efforts. This effectiveness monitoring will often include threat and viability indicators that are directly tied to our conservation actions.
We also have a need to track indicators for key ecological attributes listed in our viability table that are not tied to specific objectives - this gives us the ability to report on the overall status of the biodiversity we are striving to conserve.
We may also have a need to track indicators for identified threats that aren’t currently linked to objectives and actions but where we want to monitor them to determine if we should be taking action.
We are recommending that our project teams start their monitoring planning by addressing the needs of their stated work plan. Assuming the objectives are addressing the highest priority threats and the key ecological attributes most in need of attention - this will direct the monitoring efforts to the most important indicators.

7. 2. Target viability analyses
Focal Target
Category
Key Ecological Attribute
Indicator
Current Status 3
Tammars and black-gloved wallabies
Landscape Context
Dispersal
Distance between suitable habitats
Poor
Size
Population distribution
population density in suitable habitat
Fair
Relative abundance
Number of black-gloved wallabies recorded per km
Number of tammars recorded per km travelled 4
Mallet and moort woodlands
Fire frequency
Fire return interval
Condition
Soil and litter dynamics
Soil softness and dead organic matter
Good
Community distribution
% of pre European coverage
We are recommending that our project teams start their monitoring planning by addressing the needs of their stated work plan. Assuming the objectives are addressing the highest priority threats and the key ecological attributes most in need of attention - this will direct the monitoring efforts to the most important indicators.

8. Effectiveness vs. status monitoring
(1) Are our conservation actions having their intended impact?
Status
(2) How is the biodiversity we care about doing?
(3) How are threats to biodiversity changing?
(4) Is the capacity to improve conservation changing?
This prompts us to answer both Effectiveness and status monitoring questions:
Effectiveness monitoring addresses the question:
“Are our conservation actions having their intended impact?”
Status monitoring focuses solely on answering the questions:
“How is the biodiversity we care about doing?”
and
“How are threats to biodiversity changing?”

9. What about status monitoring?
Periodic check-ups
Blood pressure
Cholesterol
Early warning detection
Status monitoring often serves as the basis of determining when actions are needed
Periodic medical checkups provide a status assessment for your body
This status assessment provides a confirmation that everything is O.K.
The status assessment might reveal some problem that triggers taking action
Maybe the blood pressure or cholesterol levels are too high and some treatment is prescribed.
Once treatment is being administered – you now shift from a status-only situation to one where you now have an interest in determining the effectiveness of the treatments.
It is important to note that you might track some of the identical indicators to measure strategy effectiveness as you were when you were only doing status assessment. For example, you might measure cholesterol levels every 3 months for a couple of years to measure the effectiveness of a particular cholesterol lowering strategy.
The indicator – has shifted from status to effectiveness because the objective or reason for tracking the indicator has shifted.
If problem detected…
Take action
Monitor effectiveness

10. Balancing action, effectiveness, status
Issues to consider:
Need for action given known, serious threats
Level of understanding of conservation targets, ecological processes, & likely impacts of threats
Degree of certainty in effectiveness (and risks) of alternative management strategies
Available resources
There is no prescriptive solution for balancing effectiveness vs. status types of monitoring or even the balance of taking action vs. monitoring progress.
Some issues to consider include:
· Presence of known, serious threats
· Level of understanding of conservation targets, ecological processes, & likely impacts of threats – what levels of uncertainty exist?
· Degree of certainty in effectiveness (and risks) of alternative management strategies
·Available resources
- We believe that most conservation projects will want to collect some combination of target and threat-based indicators to both assess status and measure effectiveness.
But the exact combination will depend on the specific situation at the project site.
I do have a manuscript in press right now that offers more guidance on this resource allocation topic and it includes a decision tree to guide individuals through this process. I’m happy to share a pre-publication version of this paper to anyone interested.

11. Tips to reduce monitoring costs
Useful monitoring plans
Tips to reduce monitoring costs
Consider low-cost, qualitative options rather than no monitoring
Consider less frequent monitoring visits rather than no monitoring
Use partner data whenever possible
Engage local people & volunteers in monitoring efforts

12. Common monitoring pitfalls
Lack of a clearly stated purpose
Inefficient/ineffective indicators or methods
Data gathered but never summarized
Data summarized but not interpreted relative to objectives
Data summarized and interpreted but not relayed to managers
Data useful at the project level but lessons learned are never shared beyond the project
Here is a list of common pitfalls
Most of us have done one or more of these things
Consequently we have a fear of measures and monitoring
To get over our fear and so that we can really benefit we have a suggestion for how to get started….

13. about progress towards each of your OBJECTIVES
Measures
The essential ingredient....
A small number of simple metrics designed to tell you
about progress towards each of your OBJECTIVES

14. General Recommendation…..
Establish objective-based effectiveness measures and monitoring protocol first
Then add status indicators, as truly warranted

15. Objective-based Monitoring

16. Follow the trail from targets to objectives
Objective: By 2009, reduce the amount of burned native ecological system to zero. Target: Montane wet forest, south slope mesic forest Threat: Wildfires
Methods:
Map location and extent of wildfire
Notice and record events and times.
Indicators:
Acres of native ecological system burned.
Number of hours between reporting and containment of fire event.

17. Pacaya-Samiria example
Follow the trail from targets to objectives
Pacaya-Samiria example
Objective: By ___, decrease the extraction of natural resources by ___ amount. Target: Bosques de Colinas (Hill Forests)
Threat: Illegal Logging (Very High)
Methods:
Remote Sensing
Seizure records + observed shipments
Indicators:
Forest Cover
# & length of forest openings
Cubic meters of seized timber

18. Lessons from the School of Hard Knocks!
The Viability table is a place to harvest ideas for metrics but you won’t want or need to monitor everything on that table.
Beware a monitoring plan you will never execute. Or worse yet, one you will apply for a year or two and then abandon.
Never monitor something you can’t or won’t do anything about.

19. Critical Questions
Do you have at least one indicator and monitoring protocol for your priority objective(s)?
Have inconsequential, irrelevant or redundant indicators been excluded? Never monitor something you don’t intend to act on.
Can the monitoring plan be feasibly implemented?
Remember…
Monitoring requires time and money in your work plans & budgets

20. Exercise Establish Effectiveness Measures
Choose one objective for which you developed strategic actions.
“Follow the trail” from the strategic action to the objective to the threat to the target.
Review the threats table and viability table information.
Identify/choose indicator(s) to measure progress towards your objective.
Articulate the method(s) you would recommend to monitor the chosen indicators.
Put your “trail” on a flip chart. You have one hour.

21. Objective: By 2010, Ensure reduction of at least 50% of off-road vehicle trails within the National Forest Target: Black bear, mesic flatwoods and prairies Threat: Off-road vehicles
Indicators:
Miles of roads and trails actively used by OHV (threat)
% of wetlands scarred by OHV trails (target)
Method:
GPS survey for select areas of forest
Aerial photographic interpretation

22. The Essence of Adaptive Management
Conservation Action Plans should be guides to action
They are hypotheses to be worked out in practice, to be rejected, corrected, and expanded as they fail or succeed in giving us the guidance needed to inform our present needs