Writing for conservation—a skill for life STUART PAT E R S O N and MA RTIN F ISHER
Articles published in the peer-reviewed conservation litera- ture are not an unbiased representation of geographies, eco- systems or species, or even of authorship. Studies of threats to species have focused predominantly on mammals and birds in Europe,Oceania andNorthAmerica (Velasco et al., 2015); amongst top-publishing authors,women and countries in the Global South are notably underrepresented (Maas et al., 2021; James et al., 2022); comparatively less research is undertaken in the most biodiverse countries (Wilson et al., 2016); and although conservation research output in some areas of the Global South is increasing, it remains dominated by non-national scientists (Wilson et al., 2016; Pototsky & Cresswell, 2021). Until recently, one aspect of this imbalance was the limited access in poorer countries and the Global South to the relevant literature, but this has improved follow- ing the work of the Research4Life partnership, which pro- vides online access to peer-reviewed content for institutions in lower-income countries, and themove of some journals— including Oryx (Fisher, 2020)—to open access. But universal access to the peer-reviewed literature for conservationists as authors remains problematic. An earlier editorial in this journal noted that ‘.. .researchers and prac- titioners working in some of the places most requiring con- servation attention are still struggling to reach an international audience with their writing. [We] need a lit- erature for all conservationists, everywhere, written, read and utilized by researchers and practitioners wherever they may [be].’ (Fisher, 2015,p. 2). The need to scale up cap- acity development in conservation strategically—including for individuals as authors, leaders and researchers—is now recognized (O’Connell et al., 2019;O’Connell & Carter, 2022). This was the theme of the September 2022 issue of Oryx, in which 14 teams of authors examined a range of is- sues, including resilience strategies (Loffeld et al., 2022) and training evaluation (Abu-Bakarr et al., 2022; Gerrie et al., 2022). Building on this by addressing support for authors, this issue of Oryx showcases the work of 10 teams of conser- vationists who have two things in common: at least one member of each team is an alumnus of the Conservation Leadership Programme (CLP) and has also attended a Writing for Conservation workshop offered jointly by CLP and the Oryx editorial office.
STUART PATERSON (Corresponding author, MARTIN FISHER (
orcid.org/0000-0002-7162-043X,
stuart@rufford.org) The Rufford Foundation, 250 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T 7QZ, UK
orcid.org/0000-0001-5044-2585) Fauna & Flora International, Cambridge, UK Over 37 years, CLP has evolved into a partnership that fo-
cuses on enhancing the capacity of individuals from pre- dominantly low- and middle-income countries, taking advantage of the ripple effect that means the impacts of capacity support are felt more broadly amongst organizations and communities (Porzecanski et al., 2022). In 2020,CLP cele- brated the awarding of a cumulative total of USD 10 million of project funding since 1985 (Tointon, 2020). The Programme’s definition of leadership emphasizes the pow- er of a change-maker who, regardless of their profession- al stature or position, has the ability to drive transformation in a situation that is having a negative impact, directly or in- directly, on biodiversity (Webb et al., 2022). Expertise from within the three CLP partners—Birdlife International, Fauna & Flora International and theWildlife Conservation Society —along with input fromgrantees across continents and gen- erations, has honed the programme into one that strives to understand the complexities of conservation challenges. The Conservation Leadership Programme awards funding that enables early-career conservationists to undertake ex- periential learning and, additionally, offers training to en- hance skills, paid internships, opportunities for innovative practice and learning (O’Connell & Carter, 2022), and an ac- tive network that facilitates solidarity and connectivity, and also supports individual resilience (Loffeld et al., 2022). Writing skills are often taken for granted, as something
an individual develops by trial, error and personal endeav- our. The Conservation Leadership Programme and Oryx editorial office recognize, however, that support for these skills is a vital aspect of professional development for aspir- ing authors. Guided by expertise from Oryx, in-country trai- ners and workshop peers, the Writing for Conservation workshops guide each participant on a specific writing pro- ject, with the final product being amanuscript intended for submission to a peer-reviewed journal. Although other channels of communication may be
more accessible, publication in the peer-reviewed literature remains the pre-eminent way for conservationists to submit the findings of their research and conservation efforts to the scrutiny of their peers. Beyond the satisfaction of crafting a well-structured article, there are other good reasons for pub- lishing in the peer-reviewed literature: publication provides access to the author’smethods, data and interpretation, con- fers credibility and career enhancement, can be used to help raise additional funds for conservation projects, and may even be a condition of funding. Since the Writing for Conservation course began in 2008, 10 workshops have been delivered to 143 researchers and
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2022, 56(6), 801–802 © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605322001351
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