Southern Palawan in the Philippines is home to the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscape, the headwater of 33 watersheds and the habitat of newly discovered plants and of wildlife unique to the Palawan faunal region.  Illegal mining, poaching, unbridled agricultural growth, and forest overexploitation pose very real threats to the landscape, a major contributor to the world’s biodiversity.  In 2017, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) sought to address these threats through an initiative called Protect Wildlife. Protect Wildlife used all stages of the Conservation Standards to facilitate collaboration among…

In Chile, the Conservation Standards were used to evaluate protected areas (PAs) across an entire country. Chile manages its PAs through its National System of Protected Areas (SNASPE). In 2015, in order to improve the SNASPE, Chile began using all the stages of the Conservation Standards. Improving the SNASPE had the potential to help the staff of 83 PAs plan for and address a host of threats. The staff of all 83 PAs, using the common language of the Standards, prioritized threats to focus on, outlined strategies (and annual activities) to reduce those threats, and annually reevaluated which threats and…

Chile is the endemic home to the world’s southernmost palm tree, the Chilean Wine Palm. For centuries, the tree has been heavily exploited, largely for its sap used to make palm honey (a practice that was not regulated until 1941). Chilean Wine Palms used to number in the millions but are now estimated to be fewer than 130,000. La Campana National Park is home to the largest surviving population of Chilean Wine Palms (about 60,000 individuals). Identifying this population as a conservation priority for the park in 2016, the Chilean National Forest Corporation (CONAF) decided to use all stages of…

There is significant potential to reduce illegal wildlife trade through training and collaborating with airport staff. To take advantage of this potential, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) initiated the Reducing Opportunities for Unlawful Transport of Endangered Species (ROUTES) Partnership. Born out of a 2015 collaborative action planning workshop, ROUTES partners included the US government, Airports Council International (ACI), the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, the International Air Transport Association, TRAFFIC (an environmental NGO), and the World Wildlife Fund. ROUTES used stages one through four of the Conservation Standards (Assess, Plan, Implement, Analyze & Adapt) to collaborate with these…

Winners of the 2020 Conservation Standards Case Study Competition, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and the International Crane Foundation (ICF) have been working together to conserve crane populations and their ecosystems across Africa. Both organizations are committed to critically examining their work and looking for ways to improve it. Through the encouragement of a donor and other colleagues, EWT and ICF discovered the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation (the Conservation Standards (CS)) as a process that could help support their commitment to learning and improving. Both organizations quickly embraced the CS and began a journey to deeply integrate…

This guidance is intended to support practitioners undertaking conservation planning in the face of the uncertainties created by climate change. It builds on the already widely used Conservation Measures Partnership’s Conservation Standards by walking through each of the five steps and providing additional guidance on incorporating climate considerations. These additional tools and methodologies were developed and refined by experienced facilitators who have worked with a number of teams struggling to plan climate-smart conservation projects around the world. By applying this guidance, conservation teams will be able to: document the observed and likely impacts of climate change on their ecosystems and…

A Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) working group on climate adaptation, that includes representatives from Foundations of Success (FOS) and World Wildlife Fund, recently had the opportunity to work with colleagues at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH in Central Asia to develop a manual that applies the CMP Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation to EbA. The guide includes an example project based in the high mountains of Central Asia, but the target audience is the global community of EbA practitioners and the communities with which they work. To meet the specific needs of EbA, this guide…