Skip to content
A feature on how conservation NGOs use evidence to guide their decisions, by staff writer Shreya Dasgupta, is the winner in the environment category of the 2018 Science Seeker Awards.
Scientists have long urged conservation NGOs to make decisions based on scientific evidence, Shreya writes in the piece. However, big conservation NGOs run into many problems in trying to use the available science. So she sets out to explain what is known about the topic by looking at the published evidence:
“Overall, there has been a rise in peer-reviewed studies looking into the effectiveness of conservation strategies. But NGOs don’t seem to be using them,” she writes in the piece.
Read on for her full analysis of why this is and what can be done, here, Experience or evidence: How do big conservation NGOs make decisions?
The feature was part 4 of “Conservation Effectiveness,” Mongabay’s multi-part series investigating the effectiveness of some of the most popular strategies to conserve tropical forests around the world. The series was the result of a collaboration between Mongabay staff reporters Shreya Dasgupta and Mike Gaworecki, their editor Rebecca Kessler, and a team of conservation scientists led by tropical forest ecologist Zuzana Burivalova of Princeton University. Wonderfully interactive infographics were created for most features in the series by GreenInfo Network, whose team was led by Tom Allnutt.
Banner image: Crested black macaque. Photo by Rhett A. Butler / Mongabay.