New means to communicate population risk assessments among scientists and decision-makers

Population viability analyses are commonly used to assess extinction risks for species. Despite their many advantages and usefulness, many people find them hard to design, apply and communicate.

In a review* now published in the journal Conservation Biology, an international team of 11 researchers have shown that these drawbacks form a true barrier for the use of PVAs as a means of collective learning. As part of the EU project SCALES (http://www.scales-project.net/), Guy Pe’er and colleagues suggest that there is a remedy to this problem: our capacity to learn from PVAs may be greatly improved by applying a common standard for Design, Application and Communication of PVAs - or, what they called the “DAC-PVA” protocol.

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*Pe'er, G., Y. G. Matsinos, K. Johst, K. W. Franz, C. Turlure, V. Radchuk, A. H. Malinowska, J. M. R. Curtis, I. Naujokaitis-Lewis, B. A. Wintle, and K. Henle. 2013. A protocol for better design, application and communication of population viability analyses. Conservation Biology, online first. DOI: 10.1111/cobi.12076