Adaptive management of threatened species relies on having ex ante estimates of species’ responses to different interventions. Structured expert elicitation is often used to generate these estimates, but comparisons of these expert‐predicted outcomes with observed results are rare. This study aims to evaluate the utility of expert elicitation for adaptive management in the New South Wales Saving our Species program in Australi...

Water pollution from agricultural, industrial, and urban activities threatens aquatic ecosystems and the essential services they provide. Excess nitrogen has been identified as a key driver of water quality degradation, impacting biodiversity, food security, and human health. One approach to mitigating nitrogen pollution is water quality offsetting, compensating for pollution impacts by implementing nitrogen reduction measures...

Conservation interventions often have lower‐than‐desired positive impacts, as revealed by retrospective counterfactual‐based evaluations. To address this, a prospective counterfactual‐based approach can be used to estimate potential benefits and design conservation interventions to maximize outcomes. We developed a framework for estimating the expected benefit of retaining natural regeneration of forest and woodland ecosystems...

Many nations are struggling to reduce deforestation, despite having extensive environmental protection laws in place and commitments to international agreements that address the biodiversity and climate crises. We developed a novel framework to quantify the extent to which contemporary deforestation is being captured under national and subnational laws. We then applied this framework to northern Australia as a case study, a de...

Most protected area (PA) planning aims to improve biota representation within the PA system, but this does not necessarily achieve the best outcomes for biota retention across regions when we also consider habitat loss in areas outside the PA system. Here, we assess the implications that different PA expansion strategies can have on the retention of species habitat across an entire region. Using retention of forest habitat for...

Biodiversity offsetting is a globally influential policy mechanism for reconciling trade‐offs between development and biodiversity loss. However, there is little robust evidence of its effectiveness. We evaluated the outcomes of a jurisdictional offsetting policy (Victoria, Australia). Offsets under Victoria's Native Vegetation Framework (2002–2013) aimed to prevent loss and degradation of remnant vegetation, and generate gain...

Infrastructure development is a major driver of biodiversity loss globally. With upward of US$2.5 trillion in annual investments in infrastructure, the financial sector indirectly drives this biodiversity loss. At the same time, biodiversity safeguards (project‐level biodiversity impact mitigation requirements) of infrastructure financiers can help limit this damage. The coverage and harmonization of biodiversity safeguards ar...

An evidence-based approach to the conservation management of a species requires knowledge of that species’ status, distribution, ecology, and threats. Coupled with budgets for specific conservation strategies, this knowledge allows prioritisation of funding toward activities that maximise benefit for the species. However, many threatened species are poorly known, and determining which conservation strategies will achieve this...

Global efforts to deliver internationally agreed goals to reduce carbon emissions, halt biodiversity loss, and retain essential ecosystem services have been poorly integrated. These goals rely in part on preserving natural (e.g., native, largely unmodified) and seminatural (e.g., low intensity or sustainable human use) forests, woodlands, and grasslands. To show how to unify these goals, we empirically derived spatially explic...

Biodiversity offsets aim to counterbalance the residual impacts of development on species and ecosystems. Guidance documents explicitly recommend that biodiversity offset actions be located close to the location of impact because of higher potential for similar ecological conditions, but allowing greater spatial flexibility has been proposed. We examined the circumstances under which offsets distant from the impact location co...

Monitoring is critical to gauge the effect of environmental management interventions as well as to measure the effects of human disturbances such as climate change. Recognition of the critical need for monitoring means that, at irregular intervals, recommendations are made for new government-instigated programs or to revamp existing ones. Using insights from past well-intentioned (but sadly also often failed) attempts to estab...