Conservation can’t happen without people.
How do we, as conservation leaders, achieve the greatest impact with the most strategic use of resources? Answering this question involves finding the right balance of solutions, using science, policy, education, and communication. Some conservation leaders effectively engage people using education, social marketing, and other social strategies. Others choose not to use these tools—or at least, not in a deliberate or strategic process. To find out why, we conducted focus groups and surveys including more than 600 conservation professionals and interviews with 15 influential conservation leaders, as well as a literature review.
The Tools of Engagement: A Toolkit for Engaging People in Conservation is divided into six sections. The first four sections (A-D) focus on 20 core planning steps. Section E provides planning tools that can help individuals and groups work through the steps in the planning process. The last section (Section F) includes a glossary and resources, as well as an introduction to each of the complementary modules.
This resource was developed by Audubon, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Environmental Education and Training Partnership (EETAP), TogetherGreen, North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), and many other colleagues, and is designed to better engage people to achieve more sustainable conservation results.
National Audubon Society, January 2011
