Conservation and Biodiversity Monitoring in the Tropics: Realities, Priorities, and Distractions

Monitoring and research activities may hinder rather than improve conservation in tropical countries. Those concerned with conservation-particularly academics and aid agencies-too often overlook the practical realities of achieving conservation in the tropics. As a result, many initiatives divert scarce resources away from fundamental management priorities. I identify some critical threats to biodiversity and emphasize the limited resources for defending against them. I then define practical conservation priorities and explain how external agencies can deflect management from addressing these. After outlining some examples, I suggest various contributory factors, and a few commonsense options for improved practice. My views derive principally from protected forests in Africa over the last decade, but the concerns have wider relevance to conservation (cf. Sayer 1995; Balmford et al. 1998; Wells et al. 1999).