Established Academic 2023
Professor William Sutherland, Director of Research and formerly Miriam Rothschild Chair of Conservation Biology, Department of Zoology, School of Biological Sciences. Submitted on behalf of the research team
The Vice-Chancellor's Awards
for Research Impact and Engagement
About the researcher
Professor William Sutherland is Director of Research and formerly Miriam Rothschild Chair of Conservation Biology in the Department of Zoology. His research interests largely involve predicting the consequences of environmental change.
Professor Sutherland works to improve decision making in conservation policy and practice by applying ecological data and models to understand conservation problems, especially through the application of evidence-based conservation and horizon scanning.
The Vice-Chancellor's Awards
for Research Impact and Engagement
About the researcher
Professor William Sutherland is Director of Research and formerly Miriam Rothschild Chair of Conservation Biology in the Department of Zoology. His research interests largely involve predicting the consequences of environmental change.
Professor Sutherland works to improve decision making in conservation policy and practice by applying ecological data and models to understand conservation problems, especially through the application of evidence-based conservation and horizon scanning.
Working with charities, experts, businesses and government agencies globally, Conservation Evidence has quite literally revolutionised our approach to understanding and remedying the nature crisis. Adopting the Evidence Toolkit in Conservation Evidence, ensures we are as best placed as we can be to halt biodiversity loss.
Professor Des Thompson FRSE FCIEEM,
Principal Adviser on Biodiversity and Science, NatureScot
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
What is the research?
Our aim is to bring about transformational change in conservation by ensuring policy and practice are more efficient and effective. At Conservation Evidence we have worked with over 1,100 practitioners, policy makers, funders and others to support fundamental strategic and cultural shifts towards more effective conservation action.
We have co-produced an open-access database summarising global evidence on the effectiveness of conservation actions, plus a book and toolkit for generating, evaluating and integrating evidence to strengthen decision-making. Working with global organisations has resulted in over 100 committed to using and generating evidence to improve outcomes for nature and society.
Practitioners rarely have the time and/or access to adequately search for relevant scientific information. Instead, they typically rely on previous experience, informal discussions, chance findings of new studies or outdated, evidence-poor guidance to inform their practices. Learning from practice and sharing results is also limited, hampering progress.
Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash
We have led research efforts to systematically collate and embed evidence for more effective conservation practice. This allowed us to collate information in a transparent, replicable way and make it easy to find and use. The database summarises 8,634 studies reviewing 3,689 conservation actions and has been visited by 1.1 million users.
With collaborators we have also co-designed the Evidence Toolkit and an open-access book (Transforming Conservation) to facilitate evaluation, integration and generation of evidence, as well as specific outputs including guidance and national species strategies.
The urgent need for transformational global conservation action is well-understood. However, conservation is not as effective as it could, and must, be. Many projects do not achieve their desired outcomes, or do so at much higher cost than necessary, often due to a failure to use the best available evidence in decision-making.
Conservation Evidence has revolutionised how the environmental conservation sector thinks about, accesses and uses evidence to support its work. They have democratised access to evidence, meaning that charities such as ours, which usually have limited or no access to scientific literature, can access and understand the research we need to make decisions on conservation interventions.
Pete Tomlin MCIEEM,
Evidence Manager, Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust
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