This is an excellent example of a large, multi country strategic plan in the Central Asian landscape, very effectively using the Open Standards. Altai-Sayan ecoregion in Central Asia is a vast wild region covering the region where Mongolia, Russia, China, and Kazakhstan converge, comprising mountain, steppe, and forest habitats of snow leopards, argali sheep, and ibex. WWF, led by its Mongolia and Russian offices, developed the plan in 2012 for its ecoregional efforts in the four countries. Given four different management regimes and conservation situations, the plan does a good job of presenting complicated viability and threat ratings, and does…

This plan set up the framework for a subsequent Management Plan for the then recently proclaimed Axios Delta National Park, the marine outfall of four rivers near Thessaloniki in Greece. Led by Ike Tilders (Foundations of Success), the plan was developed using Steps 1 and 2 of the Open Standards. As such, it was left to the subsequent Management Plan to define the operational detail of how to implement the plan.

Penned in 2011, the Painted Dog Conservation Strategic Plan uses the Open Standards to achieve species conservation in almost flawless detail. The document steps through targets, viability, threats and situation analysis to set the plan up. Goals and indicators are defined, then results chain developed for each of the chosen strategies, followed by a operations plan and monitoring plan. Although quite a ‘dry’ document, it is an excellent example of the power of the Open Standards. Subsequently, the organisation has carried out much of the work, which can be viewed on their website. This work is proving successful, with the…

This report is a good example of how a national agency used results chains to develop common theories of change, objectives and indicators in order to assess effectiveness at varying scales and to conduct program-level adaptive management. It also provides questionnaires to collect data related to these generic indicators and recommends that all projects adopt these indicators. The results chains in this plan received intensive peer review and were incorporated into the Conservation Actions and Measures Library (CAML). Citation: AFWA 2010 Measuring the Effectiveness of State Wildlife Grant Projects: Phase I Report. Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies’ Teaming With Wildlife…

Healthy Country Planning is an adaptation of the Open Standards developed for use in participative and cross-cultural situations – typically with Indigenous communities. To better enable this, the language of the OS has been translated into simpler terms, a colour coding system adopted and a flow chart of how all the steps fit together added for clarity. It has been developed and tested across Australia, and the most experienced coaches in its use are Australian, but it has been used very successfully in the Americas and Asia. It is suggested that only experienced coaches use HCP as it does require adaptation…

This series of 4 webinar recordings by Marcia Brown (FOS) and John Morrison (WWF) provides an overview of the Climate-Smart Open Standards.  Another good base resource is the National Wildlife Federation’s Climate-Smart Conservation. Briefly, several adjustments to the Open Standards make them climate-smart (as per table below): Initial steps  – project scope, vision and targets are defined as usual Viability of the targets is defined, but desired future state of the indicators for the key ecological attributes is left until after assessment of climate vulnerability Assess direct threats but leave rating them Develop climate scenarios and impacts (climate vulnerability) Add…

Updated to reflect Version 3.0 released in December 2020. Developed and maintained by the CMP Conservation Audits Working Group, the Conservation Audit Guidelines and Tool facilitate an efficient analysis of a project or program’s design and adaptive management practice. It generates summary reports and provides a template to develop a management response. The tool also supports up to 5 audits to help users arrive at a multi-project or organizational audit assessment. Use the Conservation Audit Guidelines and Tool to increase the likelihood of positive outcomes by: Assessing project design and adaptive management against the best practices in the Conservation Standards;…