Integrated natural resource research to support broad-scale conservation

Integration of conservation partnerships across geographic, biological, and administrative boundaries is a major movement in natural-resource management.  This style of management and problem-solving is increasingly relevant as drivers of change — including climate shifts, fire, and invasive species — increasingly transcend these multidimensional boundaries and pervade conservation efforts on individual sites.  Although the benefits of broad-scale conservation are compelling, it represents a complex challenge, owing to uncertainties in scaling up information and concepts as well as in coordination that addresses a more-diverse set of issues, governance structures, and partners.  We sought to explore the particular successes and challenges of established broad-scale conservation programs, to provide direction for future research towards a larger goal of enhancing effectiveness of broad-scale conservation.  Using 17 questions, we gathered information from representatives of a diverse set of 11 broad-scale conservation partnerships spanning 29 countries on three continents.  Despite demonstrated successes of these organizations, we revealed specific challenges that likely hinder long-term success of broad-scale conservation.  Engaging stakeholders, developing conservation measures, and implementing adaptive management were dominant challenges.  Although these challenges have been identified previously in isolation, we used our results to develop integrative research questions addressing each of these challenges to inform and support effectiveness of existing and emerging broad-scale conservation efforts.  We illustrate lessons learned about spatial and temporal non-stationarity, species’ adaptive capacity to accommodate contemporary climate change, hierarchical dynamics of ecological systems, and mechanisms of biotic response using wildlife data from seven states across western North America.