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GLOBAL ASSESSMENT OF KEY QUESTIONS FOR CONSERVATION POLICY AND PRACTICE

We are conducting a workshop, funded by the United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), to identify global questions in conservation of key importance to policy and practice. These questions can be ecological, social, or economic. The preparatory activities and workshop will be patterned after a similar effort for the United Kingdom in 2006 (see Journal of Applied Ecology 43:617-627, www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2664.2006.01188.x) that has had a wide impact among policy makers and academics in the United Kingdom.

SCB is heavily involved in this exercise. We welcome suggestions for questions from all SCB members, especially conservation practitioners. Questions should be framed such that a factual answer is possible, at least in theory. For example, the question "How much wood is conserved by providing fuel efficient stoves?" is preferable to "Should low income households be provided with fuel efficient stoves?" Questions also should be amenable to answers developed by teams of researchers and practitioners. That is, the organizers wish to avoid questions such as "What are the major conservation issues and the most effective solutions?"

Unless otherwise requested, questions will be incorporated as online material with the name and affiliation of the submitter. Please send your input either to me (w.sutherland@zoo.cam.ac.uk) or to the representative of your SCB group.

Africa: Delali Dovie, delali@gecko.wits.ac.za
Asia: Lu Zhi, luzhi@pku.edu.cn
Austral and Neotropical America: Gerardo Ceballos Gonzalez, gceballo@miranda.ecologia.unam.mx
Australasia: Craig Morley, cmorley@doc.govt.nz
Europe: Andrew Pullin, a.s.pullin@bangor.ac.uk
Marine: Chris Parsons ecm-parsons@earthlink.net
North America: Erica Fleishman, fleishman@nceas.ucsb.edu
Freshwater: Ken Vance-Borland, ken.vance-borland@oregonstate.edu
Social Science: Mike Mascia, Michael.Mascia@wwfus.org

These representatives also will be contacting the Section members directly. Other participants include representatives from many of the major global conservation organizations. The group's work will result in a manuscript that we will submit to Conservation Biology.

I hope that this will be a useful and interesting exercise and thank you for any suggestions.

William Sutherland, University of Cambridge, UK

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