What are Evidence Champions?
Evidence Champions are organisations that have signed an agreement to make a clear commitment to use Conservation Evidence and other relevant sources of scientific evidence at some stage of their process and often to generate evidence as part of practice. Evidence Champions agree to the principles of evidence-based conservation and many have acted as co-designers in some element of the delivery of Conservation Evidence through testing new tools and guidance and writing support documents with us to co-develop the Evidence Toolkit.
Through this programme we aim to provide not only the scientific evidence, but the tools and skills needed to use it, in order to make scientific evidence use and generation routine and to increase the effectiveness of conservation actions.
Who are the Champions?
Current Evidence Champions include:
You can find out more about who the Champions are.
Why become an Evidence Champion?
Becoming an Evidence Champion has many benefits. You will become part of a network of forward-thinking organisations creating a demand for evidence-based practice, and making conservation more effective.
- We provide networking events and opportunities for Evidence Champions to share ideas, successes, and failures and foster collaborations.
- Your logo and description will appear on our Evidence Champions page, we will link to your website and we will promote your organisation through our various networks.
- We can provide in-house or online training in skills for assessing, gathering, using, generating scientific evidence and more.
- We can provide support in delivering evidence-based practice and training in how to incorporate scientific evidence with other important information to make decisions.
- We can provide evidence assessment support.
- As an accredited Evidence Champion, we will provide you with our logo to put on your website.
- We will promote our Evidence Champions across our various networks.
How can my organisation get involved?
Commitment to evidence-based conservation can come in a range of forms. We welcome discussions with your organisation, but for most organisations we require at least four from the checklist below, with scores increasing over time:
Evidence user:
- The organisation has a strategy outlining how evidence use will be conducted and improved.
- Job descriptions for posts that involve making decisions about management actions mention effective use of evidence.
- Goal-setting or performance evaluations for staff include questions about evidence use.
- Audits are routinely (e.g. annually) completed on the extent and effectiveness of evidence use in the organisation
- It is routine for staff to reflect on the existing evidence (e.g. from Conservation Evidence, other appropriate evidence sources) when making decisions about which management actions to carry out (e.g. when project planning, writing management plans/policies/grant proposals).
- There are established organisational processes for reviewing existing conservation management plans/work packages at strategic intervals to ensure that they are based on the best available (and most up to date) evidence.
Evidence advocate:
- The organisation produces resources that help/guide conservation decision making that are based on the best available evidence for the effectiveness of actions and that ensure the sources of evidence used are transparent and clearly referenced (e.g. evidence-based guidance, software for decision making using Conservation Evidence).
- Training/teaching is provided, and taken up, on the principles of evidence use and testing actions.
Evidence creator:
- It is routine (at least annually) to create an experimental test to compare the effectiveness of an action against a control, or to compare different treatments.
- Results of tests are documented and made publicly available regardless of the outcome (e.g. on organisation’s own website, submitted to Conservation and/or Applied Ecology Resources).
For funders we require at least one of the below:
- Funding calls include a requirement to reflect on the evidence underpinning the proposal OR for unrestricted funding Applicants/recipients are asked to outline their history of evidence use
- There are processes for reviewing the use of evidence in proposals
- There is a process for encouraging and supporting projects to embed tests within actions
- There is a process to encourage data collected to be made openly available, when it does not cause ethical issues or conservation risks
Open access checklists modified from Sutherland et al. (2022)
You can register your interest by contacting Rebecca Smith at: rks25@cam.ac.uk