🎒 Base knowledge and understanding

✅ Tasks

🌿 Content

🔑 Key terms

Phase 1: Starter

The same animal, two verdicts

Here are two statements about the same animal. Both are true.

A conservation scientist: "After more than a century of absence, the wolf has returned to the Swiss Alps on its own. From a single animal in 1995 there are now more than forty packs. This is one of the clearest conservation success stories in Europe."

A Valais sheep farmer: "Wolves killed nearly 1,500 of our farm animals in a single year. Families who have grazed these alps for generations are giving up. Calling this a success ignores the people who actually live here."

1. Both statements are factually accurate. In one sentence, explain how the same event can be a "success" to one person and a failure to another.

2. List three different groups of people who have a stake in whether the wolf stays in Switzerland.

3. Suggest two questions you would need to answer before deciding whether the return of the wolf counts as a conservation "success".

Phase 2: Three levels of success

One word, three questions

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3.3.13 The success of conservation or regeneration measures needs to be assessed.

Consider claims that conservation measures have successfully protected biodiversity, and consider the impact of the measures on local communities. The success of the conservation strategy can be reviewed or evaluated at three levels. 1. Did the measures succeed in the project as planned? 2. Was the project well received by the communities impacted? 3. Was this the best way to conserve nature? Select a local or regional example or select one from: Willie Smits rainforest restoration project in Kalimantan and Sulawesi, Wangari Maathai's Kenyan Green Belt Movement, Steve Elliot and FORRU-CMU's restoration of south-east Asian forests.

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In the last lesson you saw that conservation and regeneration measures succeed or fail for a mix of reasons: community support, funding, education, legislation and scientific research. This lesson goes one step further and asks a harder question. Once a measure is in place, how do we actually judge whether it has worked?

Claiming that a measure has "protected biodiversity" is not enough on its own. To evaluate it properly, you weigh it at three separate levels.

1. Did the measure do what it set out to do? This is the question of outcomes. Did the population recover, the habitat return, the species survive?

2. Was it well received by the communities it affected? A measure can hit its ecological target and still impose heavy costs on the people who live alongside it. Their acceptance is part of whether it succeeded.

3. Was it the best way to conserve nature? Even a measure that works and is accepted might not have been the wisest use of effort and money. Was there a better alternative?

An honest evaluation can answer yes at one level and no at another. The most useful judgements usually live in that tension.

1. State the three levels at which the success of a conservation measure can be evaluated.

2. A reserve doubles the population of a rare bird but bans local people from collecting the firewood they have always relied on. Which level of success is met, and which is in doubt?

3. Explain why a measure that achieves its ecological target might still be judged a poor conservation strategy.

Phase 3: Judging the wolf, level by level