To protect everything, please click here: does a revolution in data collection guarantee one in conservation?

Abstract

An editorial published in Nature (2007) states that ‘… it can sometimes come as a surprise for outsiders to learn how far removed the conservation biologist often is from actual efforts to save species’. For conservation biologists who are involved in practical conservation work particularly in countries where the national capacity and infrastructure for conservation is limited, it is clear that it will take more than technology to save the world. We observe an increasing emphasis on technology in the literature and among the research community and ask: How can a revolution in data collection best lead to one in conservation? An infinity of fascination remains for ecologists to discover about the natural world. The imperative to do so is urgent, both because many species may soon disappear and because new knowledge may inform their conservation. One way of accelerating the process is to grasp the burgeoning opportunities offered by the new high-tech tools. Satellites and airborne sensors (Scholes et al., 2008), smartphones and hand-held devices (Aanensen et al., 2009), remote cameras, high-tech tracking collars (Markham et al., 2012), unmanned aerial vehicles (Marris, 2013) are technological tools that help researchers to collect data cost-effectively. However, tools are only as good as the people using them or, more specifically, their thought processes. Now may be a timely moment to reflect that embracing technologies thoughtlessly can waste the opportunity, or worse (Ellwood, Wilson & Addison, 2007). The bedrock of conservation is evidence (Macdonald, Collins & Wrangham, 2007), and the best tools are needed to collect the best evidence. However, as Macdonald & Amlaner (1980) warned ecologists three decades ago, greater technology and more copious data do not always lead straightforwardly to greater biological insight, nor necessarily lead to better conservation decisions. Some of today's problems can be solved by ingenious use of existing technologies, without waiting for the Brave New World technological solutions. Conservation biologists might learn from a recent global study (OECD, 2015) that showed ‘Resources invested in ICT [information and communication technology] for education are not linked to improved student achievement in reading, mathematics or science’. The OECD (2015) study shows that new technology is not a replacement for poor teaching in schools. Similarly, conservation policy suffers today as much from failure to use existing knowledge as from lack of new knowledge (Rands et al., 2010) that might be generated by new technologies. The understandable excitement of scanning the horizon should not be used as an excuse for postponing effective communication with decision makers and better allocation of resources that would facilitate better use of what is, or could be, already known. The great advances in the field biology have assuredly been hitched to technological breakthroughs (the inventions of binoculars, radio-tracking, DNA fingerprinting, GPS etc.), but the caveat remains that having a fancy pen does not necessary make for a better writer, nor wiser words. Nonetheless, with that good-natured caution gently in place, the future will soon be upon us, bringing invisibility cloaks (Brumfield, 2013) to enable fieldworkers to sneak up unseen (but perhaps not un-smelt) on elusive subjects, or biologists equipped with powered exoskeletons (Defensetech, 2013) surveying remote sites in the company of all terrain robot mules (Ackerman, 2012). Human enhancement approaches (The Academy of Medical Sciences, 2012), such as cognitive training, brain stimulation and cognitive-enhancing drugs, can improve the sensory abilities of biologists to make better field observations. Whether these possibilities strike you as Utopian or dystopian, they are not fantastical – these technologies are already in use by the military and will, like the Internet and GPS before them, eventually percolate to civilian use. Curiosity, the NA