Poor availability of context-specific evidence hampers decision-making in conservation
Poor availability of context-specific evidence hampers decision-making in conservation
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DOI：
10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108666
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发表时间：
2020-08-01
影响因子：
5.9
通讯作者：
Sutherland, William J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Christie, Alec P.;Amano, Tatsuya;Sutherland, William J.
循证保护依赖于可靠和相关的证据。从业者往往更喜欢当地相关的研究，其结果更有可能转移到有计划的保护措施的背景下。为了量化两栖动物和鸟类保护相关证据的可用性，我们审查了保护证据，这是一个保护干预措施定量测试的数据库。研究在地理上是聚集的，在撒哈拉以南非洲西部、俄罗斯、东南亚和南美洲东部很少发现当地进行的研究。在全球范围内，每项干预措施的研究密度极低-在某一地点2000公里范围内不到一项研究。与最常研究的生物群系和分类学目相比，当我们将研究限制在研究含有高百分比受威胁物种的生物群系或分类学目时，相关证据的可用性极低。进一步限制研究设计的证据表明，只有17-20%的两栖动物和鸟类研究使用可靠的设计。我们的研究结果强调了缺乏证据的保护干预措施的有效性，和证据的差异，经常研究的地方和那些地方的保护需求是最大的。解决全球范围内特定背景证据的严重短缺问题，需要逐步改变保护干预措施的测试频率，更多地使用可靠的研究设计和标准化指标，以及分析不完整证据基础的方法学进步。
Evidence-based conservation relies on reliable and relevant evidence. Practitioners often prefer locally relevant studies whose results are more likely to be transferable to the context of planned conservation interventions. To quantify the availability of relevant evidence for amphibian and bird conservation we reviewed Conservation Evidence, a database of quantitative tests of conservation interventions. Studies were geographically clustered, and few locally conducted studies were found in Western sub-Saharan Africa, Russia, South East Asia, and Eastern South America. Globally there were extremely low densities of studies per intervention - fewer than one study within 2000 km of a given location. The availability of relevant evidence was extremely low when we restricted studies to those studying biomes or taxonomic orders containing high percentages of threatened species, compared to the most frequently studied biomes and taxonomic orders. Further constraining the evidence by study design showed that only 17-20% of amphibian and bird studies used reliable designs. Our results highlight the paucity of evidence on the effectiveness of conservation interventions, and the disparity in evidence for local contexts that are frequently studied and those where conservation needs are greatest. Addressing the serious global shortfall in context-specific evidence requires a step change in the frequency of testing conservation interventions, greater use of reliable study designs and standardized metrics, and methodological advances to analyze patchy evidence bases.