Time for some #conservation #pessimism! And shameless self promotion. Reviewing the last 20 years of biodiversity and conservation research ( https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12720), we found that scientists simply aren't studying the topics that can best help solve the #biodiversity crisis 1/

Most papers study the state of biodiversity (it's all going horribly wrong) or the mechanism that's directly causing the declines (e.g. deforestation) the two light reds in this figure). But we're not developing an in-depth understanding of the ultimate drivers of #extinctions 2/

So we have LOADS of studies saying "everything is dying" or "everything is dying because we're cutting down trees", but very few asking "why are people cutting down trees" 3/

Even more worrying, we're putting very little effort into trying to find solutions to the #extinction crisis. The vast majority of papers just describe threats (grey bars), a small number propose responses and some test them, but very few design or propose them (darker blues) 4/

So we're unlikely to really move conservation science forward in the most useful, important ways 5/

This is important because reviewing a couple of #conservationsuccess stories we found that moving through a progressively deeper understanding of threats, and designing, implementing, and testing responses is a great way to solve problems: 6/

For South Asian vultures and #diclofenac, whooping cranes, and procellariiformes birds ( #albatrosses etc) caught as bycatch, we've started with monitoring then developed a deeper understanding of threats before implementing and testing responses 7/

And while these species aren't out of the woods yet, they're doing better: this approach seems to work! 8/

So, our challenge to #biodiversity and #conservation and #environmental researchers and funders is to look at where in this framework your research sits and ask "is this the place where I can do the most good?" 9/

Sometimes the answer will be looking at direct threats, but often it'll be doing tricky, interdisciplinary research that won't get published in Science or Nature, but will actually help us to solve environmental problems 10/

OK, preaching over!

Might be of interest to @ConservEvidence @d_christianrose @Bill_Sutherland @Natures_Voice? Work was done @SRILeeds @SEELeeds @brenucsb @Princeton @CamZoology @cambridge_uccri 11/11