The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)-led collaboration has launched the Conservation Monitoring Effectiveness Technique platform (COMET) – a free, open-access library of field-tested monitoring methods that integrates scientific approaches with Indigenous and local knowledge.

With this launch, conservation practitioners across the world now have free access to a wide variety of practical methods for measuring conservation success.

While practitioners can choose from a wide range of monitoring methods, currently, there is no centralised, field-tested guide, which is most effective and cost-efficient in different contexts.

According to reports, for decades, conservation organisations have invested enormous resources in planning and implementing programmes to protect wildlife and wild places. Yet the field has lacked a centralised, freely available source of practical guidance on the most cost-effective ways to gather the data needed to evaluate those programmes and adapt conservation strategies over time. COMET helps to fills that gap.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Conservation Planning Scientist, Dr. Gautam Surya, who led the COMET team, there are limited resources for conservation, and monitoring can be expensive and time-consuming. “By enabling the people working on the ground—and in the water—to monitor outcomes cost-effectively, we can ensure that they have the information they need to make conservation more effective and equitable.” 

COMET was developed through the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP)—a collaboration of leading conservation organisations dedicated to improving conservation practice worldwide—with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, led by WCS, a member of CMP. 

Through an extensive process, the COMET team consulted practitioners from more than 30 member organisations, alongside government agencies, universities, companies, NGOs, and Indigenous Peoples and local community organisations working on conservation monitoring worldwide. The result is a platform grounded in real-world field experience and freely available, covering species populations, habitats, threats and pressures, and human well-being.  
 
According to the Senior Strategy, Learning and Evaluation Officer, Environment Program, Walton Family Foundation and a member of the CMP board, Dr. Kara Stevens “Conservation is most effective when we can learn across disciplines, communities, and ways of knowing. COMET reflects that principle by creating a space where practitioners can efficiently identify how others are monitoring progress toward outcomes, discover approaches they may not have otherwise considered, and draw on scientific, local, and traditional knowledge to inform their work. In doing so, COMET is intended to help build a stronger culture of learning and adaptation across the conservation community.”

A recognition of the importance of Traditional Knowledge for conservation monitoring is a major feature of COMET. The platform provides dedicated resources and guidance to help conservation practitioners engage with Traditional Knowledge holders including Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the context of conservation monitoring, recognising that the knowledge systems often represent generations of careful, place-based observations. The Traditional Knowledge portion of the project was led by Dr. Xiaoyue Li, a professor at Southern Methodist University.

“Conservation monitoring, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities have too often been brought in only as data points or data collectors for projects designed elsewhere,” said Dr. Li. “But communities are rights holders and knowledge producers, and the evidence is clear that conservation is more effective and more sustainable when it’s done with them rather than on them. COMET gives practitioners concrete and field-tested ways to engage communities as partners and to respect their right to consent and to govern their own knowledge.” 

Also speaking,  the Head of Business Intelligence for African Parks, Dave Verkaik, said 
 “Conservation practitioners have much to gain from standing on the shoulders of lessons learnt across the field, and from managing adaptively. Both rely on sound data. 

“Yet, while initiatives such as Conservation Evidence and the Conservation Standards catalogue what works and set out how to plan and adapt, there’s been no equivalent resource for the measurement methods both depend on. Over time, I hope to see the library grow and the sector close gaps for important ecological, social and biocultural indicators that currently lack a tried-and-tested method.”