The Biodiversity Health and Threat Status measures, though based on an assessment of individual conservation targets and threats, have been designed to summarize the overall, or average, level of biodiversity health and threat abatement at a site, respectively. By their summary nature, they mask the changes in individual targets and threats, and therefore may not be adequate for short-term, adaptive management decision-making. Instead, we look to identify appropriate indicators which enable monitoring of trends. Therefore, we need not only our Conservation Targets identified, but also a clear delineation of the critical threats.
For example, if poaching or illegal hunting is identified to be a threat to a bird species by reducing population viability, an ecological indicator would be "population size or density" while a socio-economic indicator would be "number of reported hunting violations or number of vendors selling illegal wildlife". As a second example, if the viability of our 'Wet Limestone Forest' target is compromised by unsustainable timber extraction, indicators of threat abatement could include forest surveys for tree felling or a change in use by contractors, furniture manufacturers, etc. to imported lumber.
World Bank Paper No. 65: Guidelines for Monitoring and Evaluation for Biodiversity Projects (June 1998) outlines desirable characteristics of indicators, which should:
Some examples relevant to Cockpit Country.Address the appropriate spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity Reveal meaningful trends Point as directly as possible to the state of biodiversity in the area Be direct measures or reliable proxies of threats to biodiversity Be direct measures or reliable proxies of project interventions Allow for the discrimination of "background" processes, such as weather, catastrophic events, and natural variation Be measured objectively to ensure validity over time Be cost effective (maximum information with minimum sampling time, effort, and expenditure) Allow for measuring by non-specialists, in particular local community members, without compromising data integrity Be relevant to local users so as to encourage long-term monitoring and protection after core funding terminates.