Conservation by Design is currently under construction. Please check back next year.

Map Strategies and Places

Devel­op­ing robust strate­gies is the heart of con­ser­va­tion plan­ning. This involves the gen­er­a­tion of cre­ative and defen­si­ble strate­gies, assess­ing the like­ly impact of those strate­gies against con­ser­va­tion goals, select­ing strate­gies to pur­sue, and cap­tur­ing the ratio­nale for a strat­e­gy in a the­o­ry of change. Because the ben­e­fits of con­ser­va­tion strate­gies depend upon where they are imple­ment­ed, an impor­tant com­po­nent of assess­ing the ben­e­fits of a strat­e­gy is to map it. Map­ping strate­gies has the addi­tion­al ben­e­fit of being use­ful for imple­ment­ing select­ed strategies.

The pur­pose of mak­ing results chains and strat­e­gy maps is to under­stand the like­ly out­come of a strat­e­gy, its costs and risks, and prob­a­bil­i­ty of suc­cess, so that you can intel­li­gent­ly select among pos­si­ble strate­gies. Although we list results chains in the step pri­or to strat­e­gy map­ping, we note that these can be done in either order. Specif­i­cal­ly, it may be use­ful to do a ‘back of the enve­lope’ map­ping effort to assess the poten­tial of a strat­e­gy as a fil­ter before devel­op­ing a full results chain for a strategy.

Steps For This Approach
  1. Identify Candidate Strategies
  2. Construct Results Chains
  3. Strategy and Opportunity Mapping
  4. Select Strategy or Strategies