Over the past twenty years, there has been a consistent list of frequently cited adaptation strategies for conservation; however, synopses of this list do not indicate whether the recommended adaptation measures have been tested and found effective. We undertook a literature survey to determine which, if any, of these measures had been tested for effectiveness.
Identified effectiveness studies were categorized by type of study (e.g., modeling, monitoring, experimental testing) according to a hierarchy of adaptation efficacy. The result was a very modest number of studies that tested adaptation efficacy (n=14), with very few that employed monitoring or experimentation to test the effectiveness of adaptation actions in conservation. For some of the recommendations, there was only a single efficacy-assessing paper identified. There appears to be a significant shortage of studies that present the kind of evidence that would be most useful in determining if a recommended action is likely to confer the desired conservation improvement, as well as a stagnation in the growth of these types of published studies. This points to a need for more efforts to monitor, evaluate, and test the effectiveness of climate change adaptation recommendations for conservation management. Without it, we cannot develop new ideas or learn which are the good ideas.
