The need to conserve the rapidly dwindling natural ecosystem has seldom been more pressing, but new research from the University of Oxford highlights the various factors that are holding back conservation efforts around the world.

The researchers believe their work is the first to try and systematically catalog the various issues affecting conservation today.  These include lack of funding, poor leadership and inadequate strategy, with many conservation groups in perpetual crisis mode.

“We suggest that this typology could form the basis of heuristic tools that conservationists can use to identify and manage potential risks to their projects, thereby improving decision making, strategic planning, and, ultimately, overall impact—not just in the conservation sector but across all charities,” the researchers say. “Funders could also use it to improve their due diligence and expectation management.”

Stalled progress

The researchers conducted interviews with directors and senior officials at 74 conservation groups that were mostly operating in Kenya and South Africa, both of whom have rich wildlife that is under growing pressure, despite the presence of a large number of conservation charities.

Over 80% of the interviewees reported significant staffing problems, both in terms of recruiting and retaining people.  The more ambitious among them would often leave for better paid work in the private sector.

Securing adequate support from local communities was also identified as a common concern, with the very concept of conservation alien to many local communities where poverty is a more pressing concern.

Attracting the right leaders is also a significant challenge, with the result that many conservation efforts suffer from a lack of real strategy and stumble from crisis to crisis.

“Conservation is essential because we need to protect what is left,” the researchers say.  “In my lifetime, we’ve lost 60 per cent of wildlife populations, and still we keep taking and destroying. Not only are we crossing planetary boundaries that could be impossible to recover from, but it’s just wrong to put ourselves so far away from nature to think we can just abuse and waste it.”

Despite receiving over $1 billion in aid from governments and other sources each year, biodiversity continues to dwindle.  As such, it’s clear that these agencies could function more effectively, and the researchers hope that their work goes some way towards ensuring that happens.