Adaptive Management for Conservation Success

June 11-22, 2012

Smithsonian-Mason Global Conservation Studies Program

At the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Front Royal, VA, USA

Visit http://conservationtraining.si.edu or contact SCBItraining@si.edu for more information and to register. Applications due by April 2, 2012

After the success of last year’s pilot course, the Smithsonian-Mason Partnership is teaming with FOS again in 2012 to offer a 2-week, intensive course in adaptive management. Adaptive Management principles help conservationists to build their capacity in project design, planning and evaluation. This course is based on the Conservation Measures Partnership’s Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation.  Participants gain skills in designing, planning and implementing effective projects, and in how to provide clear evidence of progress towards conservation results Participants learn these skills and tools in the context of a real conservation project and also gain experience using Miradi adaptive management software. With the help of skilled coaches, participant teams work with subject-matter experts to practice conceptualizing projects, formulating objectives, and demonstrating measurable impact. The non-credit course fee of $2500 USD includes instruction, most course materials, meals, lodging and Washington-Dulles (IAD) airport transfers. Participants can also choose to earn Continuing Education Units; graduate course credits (3) available for qualified applicants through George Mason University (total fee: $2750 in-state (VA), $3800.75 out-of-state).

Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation (CSP3128)

May 31 – June 3, 2011

Shepherdstown, WV

What will the course cover? This course will be conducted as a pilot and will equip project teams with the skills necessary for effective project cycle management in the conservation sector.  The course will introduce the theoretical concepts and practical tools behind the five steps (Conceptualize; Plan Actions and Monitoring; Implement Actions and Monitoring; Analyze, Use, Adapt; and Capture and Share Learning) of the Conservation Measures Partnership’s Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. The course will also cross-reference the Open Standards with the Fish & Wildlife Service’s Strategic Habitat Conservation approach,  and will allow participants to work together to become familiar with and apply these concepts and tools in developing management and monitoring plans for real-world conservation projects. An overview of the Miradi Adaptive Management Software and a one-year license agreement to use the software will be provided in this course.

Course objectives: By the end of this training, participants will improve their ability to:

• Strengthen project design, management, and monitoring processes
• Choose the most strategic actions; set meaningful and measurable goals and objectives
• Determine if their conservation interventions are working
• Demonstrate and communicate their project or program’s impact to their constituency
• Learn from their actions and improve them
• Become familiar with the Miradi program management software.

Who is the intended audience? Federal and State biologists and managers who work on natural resource issues and are interested in taking an experimental approach to project management. Participation is based on teams of two to three individuals working on one or more projects that have conservation of the natural environment and/or natural resources as their primary mission, although individuals who are not part of an existing project team are also encouraged to apply.  Note: Participants will most likely stay offsite NCTC campus due to room availability.

Who is teaching the material? Principal instructors are from Foundations of Success, which is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to “improve the practice of conservation through adaptive management” and “work with practitioners to test assumptions, adapt, and learn”.

To Register: Department of Interior employees should apply online through DOI LEARN (https://doilearn.doi.gov). Others should complete the registration form at http://training.fws.gov/documents/Application_Student.pdf

Who should I contact? If you are interested in participating, please contact Christy Coghlan, Course Leader at 304.876.7438 or Christy_Coghlan@fws.gov.  For registration questions, please contact Marilyn Williams at 304.876.7940.

• Did You Know…? You Can Use Common Classification Terms to Characterize Your Project in a Standard Way and to Compare Your Project to Other Projects?
• Update on FOS Strategies and Activities
• Highlighted Publications from 2007
• Meet the Newest Member of the FOS Team: Ilke Tilders
• Please Give Us Your Feedback

Did You Know…?

You Can Use Common Classification Terms to Characterize Your Project in a Standard Way and to Compare Your Project to Other Projects?

Have you ever wondered who might be doing work similar to yours and how you might learn from them? For instance, you may be working on a project to minimize new housing development impacts on wetlands and want to know how others have dealt with the same threat. To find similar projects, you might do an Internet search on “new housing development” and “wetlands.” But, another team doing similar work might have characterized their project as one that addresses “suburban development.” Still another might have used the term, “urban expansion.” To really understand what has been done, you would have to do a search on numerous terms and derivations of those terms. But if there were a common classification system for threats you could more discretely define what your project is doing and likewise, could help focus your search for similar projects.

While there is no “right” way to classify what we do in conservation (e.g., our threats, actions, and targets), it does help if we all use the same system ﾖ much as we use a standard system to classify species, genera, or families in the Linnaean system. With this in mind, the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN) have worked together to develop common classification systems for conservation actions and threats. These systems are now starting to spread throughout the conservation community. The classifications aim to: 1) Help practitioners identify all threats or possible actions that may be relevant for their site; 2) Facilitate cross-project learning by allowing practitioners to easily identify similar projects; and 3) Create general summaries or “roll-ups” for broader organizational purposes. For more information, visit the CMP web site.

Update on FOS Strategies and Activities

FOS and UMD Offer Short-Course in Adaptive Management this January

In January 2008, FOS and the University of Maryland (UMD) will offer an intensive, 3-week version of a graduate course in adaptive management for conservation projects. FOS and UMD successfully piloted the full semester version of this course last Spring through UMD’s Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology (CONS) Master’s program. Based on the high demand from conservation practitioners and graduate students, FOS and UMD decided to offer a shorter, intensive course during UMD’s Winter Session. To make it accessible to practitioners in the Washington DC area, the course will be held at the World Wildlife Fund Headquarters on weekday evenings from January 7th ﾖ 25th. Like the full semester course, this short course in adaptive management will include hands-on group work on management plans for real conservation projects as a supplement to presentations and facilitation from FOS staff members. There is still time to enroll! Visit the FOS website for information about the course or contact David Inouye, CONS Program Director at Inouye@umd.edu.

FOS Expands Its Menu of Adaptive Management Training Options

Although the adaptive management process is rather intuitive, many practitioners and organizations have not had the opportunity to develop the full set of knowledge or skills needed to successfully apply adaptive management to their conservation work. To help practitioners develop and refine these skills, FOS has traditionally provided on-site training for project teams. Over the past few years, we have witnessed steadily increasing demand for technical assistance and training in adaptive management. While this growing interest is encouraging, FOS does not have the human resources to provide in-person, tailor-made trainings for all of these requests. Moreover, to achieve our mission to improve the practice of conservation, we have to reach many more teams and individuals. With this in mind, FOS is expanding its training program in 2008 to include regionally-centralized trainings for multiple teams, academic training for graduate students and individual practitioners, and online or distance training for project teams. This package will offer a variety of options to better suit differing interests, needs, and budgets. Keep visiting the training page of our website for updates.

Public Launch of Miradi Adaptive Management Software Scheduled for Early 2008

Good conservation planning and management require that managers be systematic and explicit in the steps they take to get their projects up and running and to make sure they are on track. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were computer software that guided managers through all these steps, simplifying the process and ensuring that all steps were covered? That day is not far away. Over the past two years, the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) and FOS have worked with the non-profit technology firm, Benetech, to develop and test Miradi Adaptive Management Software. Miradi – a Swahili word meaning “project” or “goal” – is a user-friendly program that allows conservation practitioners to design, manage, monitor, and learn from their projects to more effectively meet their conservation goals. The program guides users through a series of step-by-step interview wizards, based on the CMP Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. Users can share Miradi files with others, export Miradi project data to reports, or, in the future, to a central database to share their information with other practitioners. Go to www.Miradi.org to learn more about this exciting new resource.

Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (NEAFWA) Takes Lead in Measuring and Rolling Up Results

Across the US, state fish and wildlife agencies have developed detailed Wildlife Action Plans that describe how they will protect threatened species, prevent wildlife from becoming endangered, and keep common species common. The fish and wildlife agencies, Congress, and Federal Agencies now want to know just how effective actions taken as a result of these wildlife action plans have been. The Northeast Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (NEAFWA), with assistance from FOS, has taken the lead to develop a performance reporting framework that incorporates the input of managers and experts across the Northeast region. This framework identifies key species and habitats that can help determine wildlife status across the region, a process for assessing the effectiveness of actions supported through State Wildlife Grants, and specific indicators, methods, and data sets for implementing this monitoring work. The framework will allow for reporting at the state level, as well as for rolling up data across several states to get a region-wide perspective. NEAFWA and FOS are now finalizing the framework and will soon present it to decision makers in state agencies and the federal government for their approval. Fish and wildlife agencies across the nation are watching the NEAFWA work, hoping that they can use a similar process in their region. Stay tuned to see where this exciting effort goes!

FOS and the Ocean Conservancy Evaluate the Overfishing Scorecard

In 2005, the Ocean Conservancy (OC) published its first Overfishing Scorecard, which sought to highlight the progress of eight federally-managed regional fish councils whose mandate is to help end overfishing and rebuild overfished fish stocks. The OC teamed with FOS this past year to evaluate the effectiveness of this Scorecard in helping to end overfishing in domestic fisheries. FOS and OC staff retrospectively developed a conceptual model and results chain showing the theory of change behind how the Scorecard was believed to contribute to ending overfishing. FOS then tested the assumptions by collecting data on specific indicators and anticipated intermediate outcomes related to key parts of the results chain. This combination internal/external evaluation resulted in key findings on how the Scorecard impacted fisheries councils and organizations, as well as recommendations for the development and release of the OC’s next Overfishing Scorecard.

Final Results of the Conservation Easements Learning Portfolio Available in January 2008!

In the United States, conservation easements are a popular private lands conservation tool, protecting an estimated 2.5 million hectares! Their use in Latin America, however, is rather recent, dating back to 1992. Conservationists in Latin America have adopted and adapted the tool, but, until now, they had not attempted to formally document its effectiveness in Latin America. With this in mind, a group of leading Latin American conservation organizations and professionals has worked collectively to better understand conservation easements and the conditions under which they are successful or not and why. The final results from this work will be available in January 2008 in both Spanish and English on FOS’s website, as well as on Latin American partner websites. The completion of these reports is a huge landmark for this group of dedicated individuals who came together nearly four years ago to understand how to improve private lands conservation in their countries. For the final results and other interim products, please continue to check FOS’s collaborative learning web page.

Groups Work to Halt Illegal Bushmeat Trade in Eastern Africa

Illegal hunting for the bushmeat trade in Eastern Africa is becoming as formidable a direct threat to wildlife as it has historically been in Western and Central Africa. To combat this threat, the Africa Biodiversity Collaborative Group (ABCG), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wildlife Without Borders (WWB) program, and the College of African Wildlife Management in Mweka, Tanzania plan to sponsor 8 highly qualified fellows to complete a graduate curriculum in bushmeat mitigation at Mweka College. Under the MENTOR Fellowship Program, the fellows will work with experienced mentors during their studies and will hopefully then become leaders in bushmeat mitigation in the region. FOS facilitated the strategic planning workshop for the team that is developing the module and selecting the fellows and mentors. ABCG, WWB, and Mweka were excited about the planning process and associated products. The group plans to hold another strategic planning workshop in Eastern Africa and will likely use FOS’s help to incorporate adaptive management training into the fellows’ curriculum.

FOS Shares Its Experiences in Adaptive Management Training at the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Annual Conference

The leading professional association for evaluators, AEA, held its annual meeting in Baltimore, MD this year in early November. FOS shared its experiences in training and was awarded the honor of being part of the conference’s Presidential Strand. Sessions within this strand were seen as particularly relevant to the conference theme of Learning and Evaluation and received special recognition from AEA directors. FOS staff gave two presentations on its work in adaptive management training for conservation practitioners with the World Wildlife Fund and for conservation graduate students at the University of Maryland (UMD). FOS staff look forward to participating in next year’s AEA conference.

Highlighted Publications from 2007

• Foundations of Success. 2007. Using Results Chains to Improve Strategy Effectiveness. An FOS How-To Guide.
• Foundations of Success. 2007. Results Chains: A Tool for Adaptive Management. Audio-narrated PowerPoint presentation.
• Foundations of Success, 2007. Module Syllabus: WWF Standards Step 1 Define and WWF Standards Step 2  Design (Guidance for WWF’s Online Campus).
• Conservation Measures Partnership. 2007. Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. Version 2.0. Check CMP’s website for the updated Standards, available in English, Spanish, and French.
• Proyecto SEPA. 2007. Experiencias de Ecuador y México en la Implementación de las Servidumbres Ecológicas: Un Estudio de Caso. Check FOS’s collaborative learning web page for English and Spanish versions, available in early 2008.
• Proyecto SEPA. 2007. Experiencias de Costa Rica en la Implementación de las Servidumbres Ecológicas: Un Estudio de Caso. Check FOS’s collaborative learning web page for English and Spanish versions, available in early 2008.
• The Nature Conservancy. 2007. Conservation Action Planning (CAP) Resources.
• WWF. 2007. Detailed Guidance, Tools, and Examples for Implementing the WWF Standards of Conservation Project and Programme Management.

Meet the Newest Member of the FOS Team: Ilke Tilders

FOS welcomes Ilke Tilders to its team. Ilke has a decade of experience in strategic planning, project development and management, evaluation, and fundraising for conservation programs around the globe and in Europe, Asia, and Africa in particular. Ilke is working with FOS to explore the potential for identifying and working with European partners to apply an adaptive management approach to their conservation work. From 1998-2000, Ilke coordinated strategic planning, fundraising, project management, reporting, and evaluations among several different projects that comprised WWF’s nature conservation program in Malaysia. From 2000 – 2007, she worked as a management consultant, helping projects and programs throughout the world improve their strategic plans and action plans. Ilke is a skilled facilitator and trainer, with extensive experience in project management areas, such as planning, fundraising, adaptive management, and stakeholder collaboration. Ilke is fluent in Dutch and English and conversant in French and German.

Please Give Us Your Feedback

Do you have feedback on this newsletter or our website? We would love to hear from you. Please send us an email.

Best wishes for the holidays and the new year,

- From the FOS – From the FOS Team

• Did You Know…?
• Update on FOS Strategies and Activities
• Significant Publications from 2006
• Meet the Newest Member of the FOS Team: Vinaya Swaminathan
• Please Give Us Your Feedback

Did You Know…?

Conceptual Models Are a Useful Planning Tool That Can Help You Understand and Communicate What Is Happening at Your Site

Often, conservation project teams will know they want to work in a particular area or on a certain conservation theme, but they are not sure what exactly they want to conserve, what forces are influencing conservation, or what needs to happen to ensure the site’s biodiversity is maintained or improved. FOS facilitates a process to help project teams resolve these uncertainties and then use conceptual models to visually portray what is happening at their site. Conceptual models help project teams consolidate and communicate their knowledge of their site. They also help them identify potential areas where they can develop strategies to alter factors and positively impact conservation. Guidance on conceptual models, developed by FOS and WWF, is available from our website.

Update on FOS Strategies and Activities

Beta Version of Miradi Adaptive Management Software Is Now Available

Good conservation planning and management require that managers be systematic and explicit in the steps they take to get their projects up and running and to make sure they are on track. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were computer software that guided managers through all these steps, simplifying the process and ensuring that all steps were covered? That day is not far away. Over the past several months, the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) and FOS have made significant progress in the design of the Miradi Adaptive Management Software Program (Miradi means “project” in the Sub-Saharan African language of Swahili). The Miradi team has now released a beta version for conservation practitioners to test. The software (formerly e-Adaptive Management) is designed to walk practitioners through the design and planning steps in the adaptive management cycle, helping them, for example, to: identify what they want to conserve (their conservation target); specify what threats and opportunities are affecting their conservation targets; determine which threats are of greatest significance; and outline how their actions are believed to influence the situation at their site. Go to www.Miradi.org to find out more about this exciting new resource.

Training Tomorrowﾒs Leaders Moves Forward at the University of Maryland

In conservation, we often talk about the need to conserve resources for the benefit of current and future generations. Certainly our actions today will have a profound effect on what we have to offer to these generations, but it is the younger generation and its descendants that have the greatest potential to demand and implement lasting change. For this reason, FOS has chosen “tomorrow’s leaders” as one of three key audiences for our adaptive management training strategy. Our first formal initiative in this area builds on the success of a pilot seminar series FOS helped University of Maryland graduate students develop in 2006. For 2007, UMD and FOS will offer a full course on adaptive management based on the Conservation Measures Partnership’s Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. As part of the course, students will gain hands-on experience by working with conservation professionals and FOS facilitators to develop management plans for local conservation projects. FOS and UMD hope to make this course a core requirement for graduate students in UMD’S Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology Program and replicate this model in other graduate programs. More importantly, we hope it will prepare students for their role as tomorrow’s leaders in conservation.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy Takes Steps to Monitor the Health of the Trail

Completed in 1937, the Appalachian Trail passes through 14 US states and 8 national parks and is the nation’s longest marked footpath (approximately 2,175 miles). Famous within the hiking community, the Appalachian Mountains are home to a rich array of temperate-zone species. Threatened by highway construction, housing developments, invasive exotic plants, and poor air quality, the health of the trail is, in many ways, a barometer of the health of the Eastern United States. With this in mind, FOS is working with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy to develop a plan for volunteer “citizen scientists” to help the ATC and its partners monitor the health of this national treasure. Working closely with the ATC and its partners, these volunteer citizen scientists will collect data about plants, animals, air and water quality, visibility, and migration patterns. Scientists will use this data to issue reports to help North American citizens understand the trickle-down effect of environmental threats. This initiative received widespread coverage from national media outlets in late November. See our website for an article featured in the New York Times – An Early-Warning Army of Foot Soldiers.

FOS Works to Develop a Centralized Training Initiative

Over the past several years, FOS has seen an exciting and encouraging growth in demand for adaptive management training. With this growth, however, we have found it increasingly difficult to meet all needs. In response, FOS is developing a centralized training initiative as an alternative to our traditional site-based workshops. We expect to offer centralized courses in the US and other countries that will bring together managers from multiple projects to learn the adaptive management process using experience and data from their own sites. The training will be based on the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation and will introduce managers to tools and processes to design, plan, implement, and monitor conservation projects. We hope that this approach will provide an attractive alternative to our site-based training and allow us to train multiple teams at once. The courses will be open to any institution or individual wanting to learn more about adaptive project management in conservation. Keep checking FOS’s website to learn about course offerings and schedules.

NFWF and FOS Lay the Groundwork for an Evaluation of the Coral Reef Conservation Fund

It can be relatively straightforward to assess the effectiveness of a single conservation project, but how can we know the cumulative impact of multiple projects? This is an issue with which many programs and donor agencies struggle. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) is one of these agencies. Since 2006, FOS has been working with NFWF to develop an evaluation system that will help NFWF gauge impact across the various coral reef habitat and species conservation projects it supports. To do this, FOS has been helping NFWF and NOAA, its partner agency, to develop results chains and associated indicators for commonly found target-threat-strategy combinations in the NFWF Coral Fund portfolio. FOS will continue to work with the Coral Fund team in 2007 to analyze gaps in their portfolio, cross-project learning potential, and future capacity needs.

WWF Rolls Out Its Project and Program Standards Through Its Online Learning College

While it is an important and admirable achievement to develop a set of standards for good project and program management, it is a different and much more involved process to encourage a global network of conservation practitioners to adopt and apply these standards to their work. Since 2004, WWF has been doing just that – working hard to help its staff across the globe learn about and implement the WWF Standards for Conservation Project and Programme Management (a set of standards for doing adaptive management that draws on the Conservation Measures Partnership’s Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation). FOS has been closely involved in efforts to communicate and institutionalize the Standards, which have included workshops with national and ecoregional teams, a series of guides on implementing the Standards, and the facilitation of an online learning module through the WWF College. FOS has served as the lead facilitator for the online learning module, which has included students from Kenya, Cameroon, Mexico, Colombia, Canada, Austria, Poland, Australia, and Mongolia. This pilot effort uses Internet technology to provide an effective alternative for teaching the adaptive management process to WWF staff around the globe. The course is scheduled to end in late January, at which time FOS and WWF staff will practice adaptive management by working together to discuss what has gone well, what has not gone well, and why, and to incorporate participant feedback and improve the module.

FOS and CMP Members Test and Evaluate Threat Rating Systems

For many conservation sites or projects, it often seems that there are so many threats that it is difficult to know where it would be most effective to focus efforts. To address this issue, conservation organizations have developed threat rating systems. These systems have helped make decisions about where to focus conservation resources more systematic and strategic. Historically, however, organizations have developed their own threat rating systems, tailoring them to what they believe are the most important variables to consider. While this seems logical, the result has been a proliferation of threat rating systems and little clarity about which systems are most appropriate under which circumstances. FOS and the Conservation Measures Partnership have taken on the challenge of trying to shed some light on the matter. FOS staff, working closely with select CMP members, have been testing and comparing the different systems to better understand their strengths and weaknesses. They are currently drafting a paper to communicate the results from this work. Be sure to check FOS’s website (resources section) to read about the results of this work.

CMP’s Conservation Audit Protocol Nears Completion

While conservation organizations have previously tried to evaluate project progress and impact, they are only just beginning to review their work against recently established “industry standards” for conservation project management. Conservation audits to do just this are a highly useful and insightful tool that can improve project design and implementation. With this in mind, the Conservation Measures Partnership has been developing the Conservation Audit Protocol tool to help practitioners systematically assess project planning against the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. FOS played a major role in drafting this tool, which will be available soon in its final version on the CMP website.

Significant Publications from 2006

• Associated Press. 2006. An Early-Warning Army of Foot Soldiers. The New York Times. November 27.
• IUCN-CMP Unified Classifications of Conservation Actions – A unified classifcation system of conservation actions produced by the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN)
• Salafsky, Nick and Katie Dolan. 2006. Conservation Measures: Lessons Learned from Corporate Black Belts. Working Paper. Foundations of Success and The Nature Conservancy.
• Salzer, Dan and Nick Salafsky. 2006. Allocating Resources Between Taking Action, Assessing Status, and Measuring Effectiveness of Conservation Actions. Natural Areas Journal, 26:310-316.
• WWF Guides for Implementing the WWF Standards of Conservation Project and Programme Management – A series of short, easy-to-use guides and reference materials for major project management steps outlined in the WWF Standards of Conservation Project and Program Management.

Meet the Newest Member of the FOS Team: Vinaya Swaminathan

FOS welcomes Vinaya Swaminathan to our team. Vinaya joined FOS after completing her M.S. in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology at the University of Maryland (UMD). Vinaya’s work with FOS has included facilitating strategic planning workshops, designing courses in adaptive management, planning and undertaking portfolio assessments, and drafting a conservation audit tool. As a graduate student, she led a project team in developing a graduate level curriculum in adaptive management based on the Conservation Measures Partnership’s Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. Through her current position with FOS, she will continue to be involved with implementing this course in 2007 at UMD. Her field experience includes GPS and radio telemetry, natural resource management, elephant ecology, and interpretation in Tanzania, Central Africa, Minnesota, and South Carolina. Vinaya often spends time with family in India, is fluent in Tamil, and has a basic understanding of Hindi.

Please Give Us Your Feedback

Do you have feedback on this newsletter or our website? We would love to hear from you. Please send us an e-mail.

Best wishes

- From the FOS – From the FOS Team

• Did You Know…? Check out our new newsletter section with educational “fact bites” about the work that FOS does
• Update on FOS Strategies and Activities
• Significant Publications from 2006
• Meet the Newest Member of the FOS Team: Guillermo Placci
• Please Give Us Your Feedback

Did You Know…?

Results Chains Can Help You Measure Your Project’s Success

One of the most common questions that arises when conservation practitioners want to know if their project is successful is, “What indicators should I use?” This is such a broad and overwhelming question that many practitioners have no idea where to begin. Before a practitioner even asks that question though, it is important to figure out all the causal linkages between the action taken and the expected impact. Typically, project teams will try to measure their success by counting, for example, how many people they have reached through an environmental education program or by measuring how many hectares of forest are intact. But, how can project teams know if their environmental education program has contributed to maintaining forest coverage? Results chains are a tool that FOS uses to help practitioners determine whether their interventions are actually contributing to their conservation goals. Through results chains, practitioners can be specific about how they think an intervention will influence indirect threats, opportunities, and direct threats and, in turn, whatever they are ultimately trying to conserve. Guidance on results chains, developed by FOS and WWF, is available from our website.

Update on FOS Strategies and Activities

WWF Develops Easy-to-Use Guides and Resources for Project Management

Over the past few years, WWF has been increasingly proactive about helping its staff learn about and use good project management skills – skills ranging from designing and planning a conservation project to monitoring their project’s progress to learning from successes and failures in order to improve current and future projects. In one of its latest efforts to improve project management skills, WWF has been working with FOS to develop short, easy-to-use guides and reference materials for the major project management steps. These materials, available to WWF staff through WWF Connect and to others through FOS’s website, will be continuously updated and are meant to provide WWF staff with a coherent and standard set of resources to help them manage projects in accordance with the WWF Standards of Conservation Project and Program Management. WWF, with assistance from FOS, is also in the process of developing online training modules for the WWF College. These online modules provide detailed guidance on implementing the WWF Standards and are designed to take project staff, step-by-step, through the project management cycle.

TNC and Partners Undertake Planning Processes to Protect and Manage Some of North America’s Most Important Conservation Areas

Over the past year and a half, FOS has worked closely with TNC staff in the Eastern US to help facilitate multi-stakeholder Conservation Action Planning (CAP) processes. These processes, which bring together TNC staff, non-governmental organizations, citizens groups, government agencies (at the local, state, and national level), researchers, and scientists, have been particularly effective at tapping into the the diversity of knowledge, expertise, and experience that the wide range of actors bring. Bythe end of the planning process – which are conducted over a multi-workshop sequence – participants will have identified conservation targets and their direct threats, ranked threats in order to narrow down where the conservation organizations should focus, developed a conceptual model to portray the situation at their site, identified conservation strategies, and develped a monitoring plan. FOS is presently working with TNC and its partners in the Hudson River Estuary Watershed (Eastern NY), the Alleghany Plateau (Western NY), the Allegany Forests (MD), and Lake Ontario (Central NY and Ontario, Canada). For an example of the type of products coming out of these workshops, visit ConserveOnline, under Hudson River Estuary Watershed Conservation Planning.

GEF Develops System to Evaluate Impacts of Its Work Across the Globe

The Global Environment Facility (GEF), established in 1991, has become one of the largest and most important donors supporting developing countries in their efforts to protect the global environment. In recent years, GEF has become increasingly interested in discovering the extent to which the projects it funds are truly contributing to global conservation. To address this concern, FOS staff has been working closely with GEF to develop a theory-based approach to evaluating the impacts of its investments. This approach is also designed to help GEF staff link impacts at the project levels to GEF’s higher level goal to promote global environmental change. Through improved evaluation, GEF will be able to evaluate the long-term results of its interventions, identify lessons learned across its wide-ranging portfolio of projects, and assess the sustainability and replication of its efforts.

The Packard Foundation’s Western Pacific Program Updates Its Coastal Marine Conservation Strategy

FOS is assisting The David and Lucile Packard Foundation in updating and revising its strategy for future support of coastal marine conservation in the Asia-Pacific region. As one of the largest sources of marine conservation funding in the Western Pacific, the Packard Foundation is positioned to significantly influence marine conservation and sustainable use of marine resources in the region. This strategic planning process will help Packard Foundation staff work with their grantees to be clearer about what they are trying to achieve and how they will know if they are on the right track. FOSﾒs involvement in this process follows a program review of the Western Pacific Program it completed in 2005.

WWF Eco-region Teams Improve Project Planning and Management

For the past two years, FOS has been facilitating strategic planning processes with a variety of WWF ecoregions to help teams design, plan, and monitor their conservation projects. These trainings have not only strengthened teamsﾒ skills to think critically in a systematic way, but they have also helped build donor, manager, and team confidence that the teams are clear in what they are trying to do and have strategically chosen their conservation actions. To date, FOS has trained 179 managers from 1 national program 8 ecoregions and 2 thematic programs. The national program and ecoregions include: Lao PDR, Bering Sea, Chihuahuan Desert, East-African Marine, Galapagos, Gulf of California, Meso-American Reef, Southwest Amazon, and Upper Paran￡ Atlantic Forest. The thematic programs include: Asian Rhino-Elephant Action Strategy (AREAS) Program and DGIS-TMF Poverty Reduction through Improved Natural Resource Management.

WWF’s Southwest Amazon Ecoregion Moves Through Project Cycle

For over a year now, FOS has been working with members of WWFﾒs Southwest Amazon Ecoregion team to help refine their adaptive management approach based on the WWF Standards of Conservation Project and Programme Management. The better part of the last year was spent on the Define and Design steps of the WWF Standards ﾖ clarifying biodiversity targets, defining clear goals and objectives, identifying strategic actions, and developing practical monitoring plans. Recently, however, we have begun to ﾓclose the loopﾔ in the WWF Standards project cycle. In particular, FOS has been working with the WWF Southwest Amazon team to harmonize strategies and expected intermediate and long-term results across the 7 projects/sites that make up the Southwest Amazon Ecoregion. Based on this cross site analysis, the WWF team has been able to identify common indicators and data collection methods thus laying the groundwork for effective cross-site communication and learning.

Appalachian Trail Conservancy Strives to Improve the Effectiveness of Its Programs

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) is a volunteer-based nonprofit organization dedicated to conserving the 2,175 mile Appalachian National Scenic Trail, which extends from Maine to Georgia. In an effort to increase the effectiveness of its programs, the ATC contracted FOS to facilitate a 3-day strategic planning exercise. Participants were able to use the workshop to begin working on their strategic plan and will continue to communicate with FOS staff for feedback as they complete their plan. FOS is also playing an advisory role to the ATC for the design and organization of the Environmental Monitoring Symposium, which will bring together over 70 scientists, natural-resource managers, educators, and policy experts to develop an ambitious monitoring framework for research and applied environmental science along the “Appalachian Trail Mega-Transect.”

Tomorrow’s Leaders Learn How to Plan, Design, and Evaluate Conservation Projects

Training in the adaptive management process is one of the six strategies FOS uses to improve the practice of conservation. A key training audience is “tomorrow’s leaders” (students and young professionals entering the conservation field) – a group that will one day be responsible for managing and safeguarding the world’s biodiversity. In our first formal undertaking of training “tomorrow’s leaders,” FOS teamed up with WWF to provide technical support to students at the University of Maryland to design a curriculum for a graduate course in adaptive management. FOS gave four lectures for a spring seminar and the full course will begin during the 2006-2007 academic year. Students have been excited to learn practical tools and methods for designing, planning and evaluating conservation projects. These skills will help them be more effective as they launch their conservation careers.

Significant Publications from 2006

• WWF Guides for Implementing the WWF Standards of Conservation Project and Program Management – A series of short, easy-to-use guides and reference materials for the major project management steps outlined in the WWF Standards of Conservation Project and Program Management.
• IUCN-CMP Unified Classifications of Direct Threats and Conservation Actions – A unified classifcation system of direct threats and conservation actions produced by the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN)
• Salzer, Dan and Nick Salafsky. 2006. Allocating Resources Between Taking Action, Assessing Status, and Measuring Effectiveness of Conservation Actions (694 kb). Natural Areas Journal, 26: 310-316.

Meet the Newest Member of the FOS Team: Guillermo Placci

FOS welcomes Guillermo Placci to our team. Guillermo started working with FOS in November 2005, bringing a fresh perspective, innate talent, and years of experience to the team. Based in Argentina, Guillermo has been actively involved in training and providing technical assistance to WWF teams in the Southwest Amazon, Gulf of California, and East African Marine ecoregions. Before joining FOS, he founded and directed Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina (FVSA)’s Atlantic Forest ecoregion office at Puerto Iguazú. From that position, he coordinated the WWF/FVSA’s Atlantic Forest Conservation Program in Argentina, and during the last year, he also acted as the Ecoregion Transnational Coordinator for Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Guillermo has a PhD in Natural Science from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina. He has several years of experience teaching at the high school, graduate, and post-graduate level – experience which has served him well in his training work with FOS. Guillermo has 3 children and lives in a rural area, where he maintains an organic vegetable garden and orchard. He also enjoys processing the fruits and vegetables he produces and doing carpentry projects.

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Best wishes

- From the FOS – From the FOS Team

• Update on Strategies and Activities
• Formal Publications from 2005
• Visit FOS’s New Website
• Please Give Us Your Feedback

Update on Strategies and Activities

Here is an update on some of our work:

FOS Helps TNC and WWF Launch Adaptive Management Systems, Including Training Materials and Resource Guides

FOS is continuing to work with both The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund/WWF to help each institution develop and refine their project-based adaptive management processes. With TNC, FOS has been involved in developing and testing the Conservation Action Planning (CAP) Process ﾖ the successor to the 5-S Framework. With WWF,  FOS staff has been working on WWF’s new Standards of Conservation Practice and more recently, developing and/or editing a set of resource guides and training materials to help practitioners implement the steps and guidelines outlined in the Standards. FOS has also been heavily involved in facilitating trainings for field staff (see story below).

FOS Continues Field Based Trainings with WWF Teams Across the Globe

FOS is working with a variety of WWF Ecoregions – through WWF-US – to facilitate the development of strategic plans for project teams. Most recently, we provided training for WWF’s East African Marine and Gulf of California ecoregions. WWF staff and partners learned to use the WWF Standards to develop strategic action plans, as well as monitoring plans that measure project impact and effectiveness. This field level focus has been critical for providing two-way feedback that ensures the Standards are rooted in what is possible and useful for the field while also serving higher-level institutional needs. These trainings have not only strengthened teams’ skills to think critically in a systematic way but have also helped build donor, manager and team confidence that the teams are clear in what they are trying to do and have strategically chosen their conservation actions.

CMP Starts Building Initial Modules of the e-Adaptive Management Software Program

The Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) is a partnership of conservation NGOs that seek better ways to design, manage, and measure the impacts of their conservation actions. FOS acts as a coordinator of CMP to organize and facilitate meetings, coordinate technical work, handle administrative matters, and provide technical advice where needed. In 2005, CMP began actively working on the e-Adaptive Management Software Program ﾖ This software program will help conservation practitioners to implement the CMP Open Standards. CMP is currently working with Benetech, a Silicon Valley-based non-profit, to build the initial modules of this software program. For more information on CMP, visit www.conservationmeasures.org.

CMP Works with IUCN to Develop Common Classifications of Threats and Actions

Over the past several years, FOS staff has been working through the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) to develop standard classifications of direct threats and of conservation actions. Simultaneously, IUCN has been developing its own authority files of threats and actions. Over the past few months, the two groups have come together and are now working on a common classification that will hopefully become the global standard and the foundation of a common science of conservation. Read an editorial about the common taxonomy.

Private Land Conservation Professionals in Latin America Take a Critical Look at Conservation Easements

Private lands conservation practitioners in Latin America have been working to learn about the conditions under which conservation easements are successful or not in the region. This group recently finalized a document that outlines the conventional wisdom on conservation easements (now available through FOS’s website, in both English and Spanish). Last Spring, the group also developed a learning framework for testing some of the priority assumptions laid out in the conventional wisdom document. This framework, available only in Spanish, has served as a guide for the applied research the group is undertaking. Currently, group members are finishing up interviews with landowners and conservation NGOs. One member remarked that this ﾓwork is very important. We should be doing this type of analysis with all of our conservation projects. Despite the value of this work, the project has experienced a number of challenges, including comparing very different applications of conservation easements in different countries and the typical challenges of trying to coordinate efforts remotely and across several different countries.

Locally Managed Marine Areas (LMMA) Network Conducts First Systematic Cross-Site Analyses

FOS works with members of the LMMA learning network that spans the people and cultures of Southeast Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and the Americas to collectively learn how to improve marine management activities and increase conservation impact. In September 2005, the LMMA Network brought together representatives of projects from Fiji, the Philippines, and Indonesia to conduct the first systematic analysis of different factors affecting LMMA success across multiple projects. This process brought together scientists and community members to start the process of comparing what was going on at their respective sites. More information about the LMMA learning portfolio is available at www.lmmanetwork.org.

FOS Helps TNC’s Latin American Partners Document Achievements and Challenges with Watershed Valuation Projects

For the last few years, TNC has provided technical assistance to watershed valuation projects in several countries in Latin America as a strategy for achieving biodiversity conservation. At the request of TNC, FOS developed a series of case studies that document the experiences and knowledge that TNC and its partner organizations have gained about watershed valuation projects in six sites (covering the countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, and Ecuador). The case studies extensively document experiences and lessons learned at and across the sites about the use and effectiveness of watershed valuation as a conservation strategy. The case studies were designed to facilitate learning among these and other sites that are currently implementing watershed valuation projects or are interested in undertaking these activities. Visit our website’s Collaborative Learning Initiatives page in the near future to check for documents related to this work.

Participants in TNC’s Multi-Stakeholder Planning Efforts in the Hudson River Estuary Watershed Take Initial Steps Toward Coordinated Action

The Nature Conservancy’s Eastern New York Chapter, with facilitation assistance from FOS, has recently wrapped up a multi-stakeholder planning effort for the Hudson River Estuary Watershed. This effort brought together more than 50 people from over 20 organizations to use TNC’s Conservation Action Planning (CAP) Process to develop targets, a situation analysis, strategies, and a monitoring plan for the entire Hudson River Estuary Watershed between the Troy Dam and New York City. In November 2005, many of these stakeholders came together again to determine how they could start putting the plans they had developed into action. Reports are available for the planning products and the facilitation process used during the planning stage, via FOS’s website. You can also view additional products through The Nature Conservancy’s Conserveonline web portal.

Formal Publications from 2005

A list of formally published articles from 2005 follows. Be sure to check our website frequently for recent publications – both formal publications and gray literature.

• Stem, Caroline, Richard Margoluis, Nick Salafsky, and Marcia Brown. 2005. Monitoring and Evaluation in Conservation: A Review of Trends and Approaches. Conservation Biology, 19: 295-309.
• Salafsky, Nick and Dan Salzer. 2005. The Unglamorous Essential Foundation of Conservation Science. Oryx 39(3): 235-236, July.
• O’Connor, Sheila, Nick Salafsky, and Dan Salzer. 2005. Monitoring Forest Restoration Projects in the Context of an Adaptive Management Cycle. Pages 145-149 in Mansourian, Stephanie, Daniel Vallauri, and Nigel Dudley (editors). Forest Restoration in Landscapes: Beyond Planting Trees, Springer, New York.

Visit FOS’s New Website

As we mentioned in our last newsletter, we have developed a more dynamic website that better engages our visitors and more adequately reflects the variety of initiatives we undertake. We are continually updating the site, so be sure to visit often for front page news updates, reports on our current activities, and access to our growing library of resources. Check the new website out at: www.fosonline.org. If you have any suggestions about what you like or dislike about our site and how we can continue to improve it, please contact us.

Please Give Us Your Feedback

Do you have feedback on this newsletter or our website? We would love to hear from you. Please send us an e-mail.

Happy Holidays to all!

- From the FOS – From the FOS Team