Consider the timeframe of expected changes.

If, even under the best cir­cum­stances, con­ser­va­tion out­comes and impacts will take years to become appar­ent, don’t spend a lot of time and mon­ey mon­i­tor­ing to con­firm the lack of change. Treat mon­i­tor­ing as a way to test for hypoth­e­sized changes. Design mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion plans that have real­is­tic time­frames and geo­graph­ic scales. Note that this main­ly applies to ongo­ing mon­i­tor­ing activ­i­ties that are required to detect sub­se­quent change. Also note that the rel­e­vant time­frame for neg­a­tive impacts may be dif­fer­ent than the time frame rel­e­vant for desired change, and may require soon­er or more fre­quent monitoring.