This grant is being used by the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology to help develop an evidence-based approach to conservation.

The award of $480,000, payable over five years, will enable the Department to develop a research programme that increases published information on the effectiveness of land management strategies, expands the database of available summaries and synopses, and spreads the results to the global conservation community.

Although many conservation management initiatives are successful, the project is seeking to increase the scientific rigour by which they are assessed. One way it will do that is to increase the number of new papers on the online journal www.conservationevidence.com by working with the global community.

The project has five stages: to document the effectiveness of conservation initiatives, provide a searchable database, systematically review papers, provide synopses of papers and spread information about the effectiveness of schemes.