John Morrison

Most people are aware of the global reduction in forest cover as a result of ever-increasing human domination of the planet. The impacts are felt on biodiversity and on people as shown in the previous chapters of this book. A natural reaction to this forest loss is to engage in forest restoration activities. Across the planet, conservationists are working to increase overall forest coverage using a variety of strategies. In some cases this includes attempting to intensify agriculture so that it requires less land, focussing on value over volume in wood products, and concentrating production in (native) plantation forests. Another strategy is to de-intensify agricultural uses and promote a mosaic of natural and anthropogenic elements, allowing native species and communities to fill in around our use of the landscape, and provide necessary ecosystem services to operate more freely. In any case, the competition for land among a range of interests and stakeholders necessitates that all forest conservation activities, including forest restoration, be strategic and for a specific purpose(s), be it conservation or otherwise. This strategic focus should ideally be identified through a participatory process that leads to a long-term “vision” for the desired future state of the area. Increasing the quality and quantity of forest cover is an important general goal for conservation, both for ecosystem services (watershed protection, climate regulation, etc.) and for the needs of those species that depend on forests. However, due to the intense competition for land between the forces of development and conservation, efficiency in how and where forest restoration occurs is critical. In other words, while increased tree cover will nearly always be beneficial from a conservation perspective, if possible, restoration efforts should be focussed in such a way that multiple conservation and social goals are reached (also see sections “Restoring Ecological Functions” and “Restoring Socioeconomic Values”). Meeting both 6 Restoration as a Strategy to Contribute to Ecoregion Visions

There is growing interest in evidence‐based conservation, yet there are no widely accepted standard definitions of evidence, let alone guidance on how to use it in the context of conservation and natural resource management practice. In this paper, we first draw on insights of evidence‐based practice from different disciplines to define evidence as being the “relevant information used to assess one or more hypotheses related to a question of interest.” We then construct a typology of different kinds of information, hypotheses, and evidence and show how these different types can be used in different steps of conservation practice. In particular, we distinguish between specific evidence used to assess project hypotheses and generic evidence used to assess generic hypotheses. We next build on this typology to develop a decision tree to support practitioners in how to appropriately use available specific and generic evidence in a given conservation situation. Finally, we conclude with a...

Climate change has challenged biodiversity conservation practitioners and planners. In this paper, we provide scalable guidance on integrating climate change into conservation planning and adaptive management that results in the most appropriate conservation strategies. This integrated “Climate-Smart Conservation Practice” focuses on analyzing the potential impact of climate change on species, ecosystems, and ecosystem services, combined with “conventional” (non-climate) threats, and incorporating this knowledge into projects. The guidance is based on the already widely-used “Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation”, an application of systems thinking and adaptive management, which has been successfully applied to thousands of conservation projects. Our framework emphasizes a methodical analysis of climate change impacts for projects to support more productive goals and strategy development. We provide two case studies showing the applicability and flexibility of this framew...

... COLBY LOUCKS,* DAVID OLSON,* JOHN MORRISON,* JOHN LAMOREUX,* MEGHANMCKNIGHT,* AND PRASHANT ... Address correspondence to E. Dinerstein, email eric.dinerstein@ wwfus.org Paper submitted ... Diggs, W. Eich-baum, S. Walters, W. Wettengel, T. Allnutt, CJ ...