Successes, challenges and insights from integration of testing of management interventions in conservation practice

Abstract Testing conservation management interventions helps to diagnose causes of biodiversity loss and identify practical solutions, so helping to build a robust evidence base for good conservation decision‐making. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has multi‐decadal experience of collaboration between scientists and practitioners to inform conservation. This is based on a problem‐solving framework to identify, test and adaptively improve interventions for species and ecosystem recovery, using RSPB's nature reserves, landscape‐scale conservation and agri‐environment interventions as platforms. Here, we draw upon our experience of experimental tests and related counterfactual study designs, addressing conservation management problems at multiple scales, to consider the benefits and challenges involved in deploying these approaches and some of the insights gained. Outcomes with tangible conservation impact required enduring trust and partnership between scientists, conservation practitioners and funders, both within and between organisations. Challenges have most often arisen when it is difficult to introduce and maintain experimental designs in the face of wider land management priorities and pressures, and when biological understanding of what works has not been matched by social and economic understanding of what measures will be practicable and attractive for those responsible for implementation. Synthesis and applications . Tests of conservation interventions, and especially long‐term experiments, are most likely to succeed when there is a broad partnership commitment to evidence‐based approaches amongst practitioners and funders, as well as scientists. A track record of implementing such studies has undoubtedly helped to build organisational capability in evidence‐based conservation in RSPB but more remains to be done to fully embed a culture of evidence‐based planning, decision‐making and conservation action. Nonetheless, our examples suggest that effort invested in building evidence‐based capability in conservation organisations will be repaid because it acts to optimise conservation impact. It also builds the knowledge and confidence of scientists and practitioners to act as honest brokers and advocates at the interface between science, practice and policy to drive conservation impact at a time of unprecedented environmental challenge.