Case Study Competitions

Every two years, the Conservation Measures Partnership and the Conservation Coaches Network run a case study competition. The competition highlights experiences and lessons in developing, implementing, and adapting conservation projects across the globe.

In 2022, we decided to have a photo story competition instead. If you would like to learn more, please check out this announcement.

2020 Winners

We had an amazing group of entries for our 3rd Global Case Study Competition and are very excited to announce the winners! What a fabulous way to learn about conservation projects around the world and their use of the Conservation Standards.

View the winning entries below!

1st Place:

Partnership Adoption of the Conservation Standards

Learn about the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and the International Crane Foundation’s (ICF) integration of the Conservation Standards into their collaborative conservation work and the effects that integration had.

2nd Place:

Reducing Opportunities for Unlawful Transport of Endangered Species (ROUTES)

Learn about ROUTES, a multipronged approach to curbing illegal wildlife smuggling.

3rd Place (TIE):

Think to Learn, Learn to Know, Know to Adapt, Adapt to Win 

and

Conservation and Adaptive Management Strategies for Chile’s National System of Protected Areas (SNASPE)

The first case gets into the Chilean National Forest Corporation’s (CONAF) efforts to save the world’s southernmost palm tree. The second case is about CONAF’s use of the Conservation Standards to strengthen a nationwide network of protected areas.

Honorable Mention:

Demonstrating Integrated Conservation Planning and Implementation for Habitat Management and Wildlife Protection in Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscape

This program in the Philippines sought to use the Conservation Standards to save a highly biodiverse mountain landscape.

Previous Winners

Follow the links below to learn about case study winners. Or visit our Resources Library and search for case studies to read about more experiences and view products developed by teams using the Conservation Standards.

2018 Winners

1st Place:

The Road Traveled in Chile: Lessons and Challenges in Strengthening Adaptive Management in a National System of Protected Areas

Drawn from a lively field of entries, the inspiring Road Traveled in Chile won handsomely showing good implementation of the Open Standards at multiple scales and providing an excellent overview of the issues involved in making OS the core planning process.

It also demonstrated a successful change in organizational culture, with the competition ‘crowd-sourced voting’ being swamped by happy Chilean staff and colleagues.

2nd Place:

Proyecto Titi: Using an Adaptive Management Approach to Expand Efforts to Save Cotton-top Tamarins in Northwest Colombia

This project seized an opportunity presented by a newfound peace in Colombia to expand its work to new locations, using the OS to efficiently adapt planning and apply lessons learned from their earlier project work.

3rd Place:

Bush Heritage Australia: with their solid use of the OS in communicating the planning, management and monitoring of Yourka Reserve – A Unique Tropical Savanna Ecosystem was awarded third place.

Judges saw this as a good example of full cycle adaptive management – adapting targets, goals, threats and objectives over time as more knowledge became available, and also for the compelling use of dashboards to show progress on key threats and targets.

Honorable Mentions

Two other projects gained an Honorable Mention.

An impressive effort from Bat Conservation International: From Great Conversation to Great Conservation demonstrates that the OS can be deployed across an organization with sufficient management will and funding, and was a great example of learning by doing throughout the training process. However, the case study was focused on very early steps in the process of OS implementation and was thus unable to address specific actions taken.

Whilst still in its early days, the very promising USAID Learning Group Explores the Effectiveness of Enterprises as a Conservation Strategy demonstrated a highly scaleable approach.  Following a deep initial investment in developing a generic Theory of Change and extensive evidence gathering, USAID has created a robust framework for systematic learning.  As a conservation enterprise strategy lies at the core of many bilateral and multilateral conservation and community development investments, getting this right has potential to underpin effective conservation.

2016 Winners

1st Place:

Chimpanzee habitat in Tanzania by the Jane Goodall Institute

For more than twenty years, the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) has been working with local communities, governments, other NGOs and science and technology partners to learn how to design landscapes that work better for people and chimpanzees in the Greater Gombe Ecosystem, Tanzania. Today, many of those woodland habitats are coming back thanks to natural regeneration in village forest reserves managed by the local communities. This case study covers lessons learned from using the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation to help JGI continuously adapt and improve its community habitat conservation strategies in Gombe and elsewhere.

2nd Place:

Full cycle adaptive management in Australia’s arid rangelands by Bush Heritage Australia

Boolcoomatta is a conservation reserve that has been managed by Bush Heritage Australia for 10 years, during which time the management plan has cycled through three major adaptations based on analysis of implementation and results.

3rd Place:

25 years of adaptive management in the Cascade Head Preserve and Salmon River Watershed, Oregon USA by the Nature Conservancy

Judges saw this as a good example of full cycle adaptive management – adapting targets, goals, threats and objectives over time as more knowledge became available – and they also appreciated the compelling use of dashboards to show progress on key threats and targets.

Read the full announcement here.