Overall Goals and Objectives
Education and Outreach
- Raise awareness within SCB, other conservation scientists and practitioners, and the public of the validity of using citizen science to advance biodiversity conservation.
- Promote the ways that citizen science contributes to conservation biology, natural resource management, climate change adaptation, and policy.
- Increase knowledge exchange for citizen science and citizen scientists within the field of conservation biology.
- Foster ownership of citizen science results and management outcomes by participants.
Facilitate the Practice of Citizen Science
- Facilitate professional scientists/researchers working with the public. Create connections between professional and citizen scientists on priority research topics.
- Promote the use of citizen science projects to further conservation goals at multiple scales.
- Provide participatory research skills training for conservation scientists.
Become an International Conservation Biology Citizen Science Network Builder and Knowledge Hub
- Serve as knowledge hub for innovations in citizen science, including:
- Promoting forms of public engagement and partnerships.
- Targeting and tracking behavior change.
- Improving the credibility of using citizen science to advance conservation where there is a divide with scientists, managers, or policy makers.
- Developing and promoting related methods, technology, and apps for using citizen science for conservation research.
- Highlighting successes, failures, and processes that might not be captured in the peer-reviewed literature.
- Increasing utility of citizen science metadata.
- Elevate the role of citizen science in the national/international policy realm (as distinguished from ‘outreach’). Develop and promote policy change for government and other agencies to recognize and prioritize the utility, need, and benefits of citizen engagement in conservation science and practice.
- Seek and share solutions to the challenges of implementation of citizen science for conservation, including project management, data accuracy/precision, partnership building, funding, etc.