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Biodiversity response to local-scale conservation interventions: A systematic review and meta-analysis protocol

AuthorsAlexa VarahAndy PurvisAdriana De Palma
Year2025
VenueEcological Solutions and Evidence

Problem statement: Human-driven biodiversity loss continues worldwide, despite knowledge of its drivers. This has serious implications not only for nature but also for the resources and services biodiversity provides to humans, such as climate regulation and food provision. Small-scale conservation interventions aim to mitigate these issues in people's local environments and can engender a sense of agency and nature connectedness. However, we lack consensus about their effectiveness as studies of local-scale actions often find divergent effects on biodiversity. Furthermore, we do not know which conservation interventions are most effective in different spatial or taxonomic contexts. Methods: We aim to systematically review the evidence from peer-reviewed and grey literature on local-scale conservation interventions. We have designed a flexible, modular protocol allowing us to add further data in the future. We will initially make predictions about the impact of these interventions in English contexts, but the method is designed to be applicable globally. We will generate a series of datasets, each containing evidence about different interventions and their impact on species' abundance and diversity. We will use meta-analysis to estimate these interventions' impact on biodiversity. Depending on the data retrieved, we may also be able to investigate nuances such as which interventions work best for specific contexts or organisms, or whether impacts vary over time. We would do this using additional variables and/or data subsets. In publishing this protocol, and in using the most up-to-date, rigorous methods, we aim to mitigate potential biases arising from either the data or methodology. In the first instance, we will complete a meta-analysis of interventions involving increasing floral availability; however, this protocol will also be used for guiding future meta-analyses incorporating additional interventions. Practical implications: Our findings could be used to inform local-scale conservation management and conservation policy. The results of our initial application of this protocol will be used to inform conservation interventions in schools and colleges in England as part of the UK government's National Education Nature Park project. The collated data set will be made available for use by others wishing to investigate the impacts of local-scale conservation interventions in their own contexts.

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Stage 1 ManuscriptWiley
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