WILDTEAM PRACTICE AND INSIGHTS

We’re excited to announce the launch of the new WildTeam Learning Platform. This is a major step forward in how we deliver conservation training worldwide and we welcome you to be part of this journey!

Measuring conservation success comes with its own vocabulary. Whether you're reading through a monitoring plan for the first time, trying to understand what your evaluator means by "confidence rating", or need to explain the difference between direct and indirect results to your team, this glossary provides clear definitions of essential monitoring and evaluation terms.

Monitoring and Evaluation for Wildlife Conservation is a structured approach to measuring and reporting conservation impact by tracking changes in biodiversity, threats, behaviours, and influences. Unlike activity-based reporting, it focuses on measurable results—did threats decrease? Did behaviours change? Did biodiversity improve?

Stakeholder Engagement for Wildlife Conservation is a structured process for involving individuals and groups affected by or needed for conservation work to ensure projects achieve impact while respecting stakeholder rights and needs.

Writing successful conservation grant applications requires an understanding of grant-specific vocabulary. Whether you're deciphering donor guidelines for the first time, trying to understand the difference between direct and indirect results, or need to explain what makes a logframe different from a work schedule to your team, this glossary provides clear definitions of essential grant writing terms.

Successful conservation grant applications follow three principles: choose grants strategically aligned with your conservation strategy (not opportunistically), set realistic expectations donors can trust, and present compelling content through clear writing and strong evidence.

Planning a conservation strategy comes with its own vocabulary. Whether you're creating your first current situation diagram, trying to understand the difference between a threat and a behaviour, or need to explain what makes something an intervention point to your team, this glossary provides clear definitions of essential conservation strategy planning terms.

Conservation project planning is a structured approach to creating strategies that achieve measurable biodiversity impact by understanding current threats, identifying what drives them, and selecting work that addresses root causes.

Conservation organisations face a unique challenge: they must deliver measurable impact for wildlife and ecosystems while working with limited resources, constant uncertainty, and ever-changing conditions. The difference between organisations that consistently achieve their conservation goals and those that struggle often comes down to one thing—how well they manage their projects.

Managing a conservation project comes with its own vocabulary. Whether you're reading through a project plan for the first time, trying to understand what your project manager means by "exception", or need to explain the difference between a milestone and a task to your team, this glossary provides clear definitions of essential conservation project management terms.

Managing meetings is a systematic process for ensuring conservation project discussions are necessary, productive, and achieve clear objectives. Rather than scheduling meetings by habit, the process requires setting explicit objectives, preparing structured agendas, assigning specific roles, and capturing decisions in accessible formats. When applied consistently, it prevents wasted staff time, improves decision quality, and ensures meeting outcomes translate into project action.

Risk management in conservation projects means identifying things that haven't happened yet but could negatively affect your project, assessing their potential impact and likelihood, then planning responses to avoid, reduce, transfer, or accept them. Unlike reactive crisis management, effective risk management enables you to prevent problems before they occur, keeping projects on track to achieve planned conservation impact within budget and schedule while minimizing harm to wildlife and people.

The Plan phase creates the complete project blueprint before any conservation work begins. It mobilises the planning team, establishes core management processes, and produces a signed-off Project plan that documents your conservation strategy, monitoring approach, roles, stakeholder engagement, risks, work plan, and budget.

The Project manager is the only mandatory role in conservation project management, responsible for day-to-day project execution and reporting while the project stays on track to achieve its planned impact. This role holds decision-making authority over daily operations, coordinates all workstreams, manages control processes, and serves as the central point of accountability.

The "Do something" principle is a conservation project management approach that encourages teams to begin addressing threats to biodiversity despite information gaps, rather than delaying action until perfect knowledge is achieved. While gathering complete information, biodiversity targets continue degrading.

Conservation project management is a structured approach to planning, funding, implementing, and evaluating wildlife conservation work within defined schedules and budgets to achieve measurable impact. Unlike generic project management, it accounts for biological uncertainty, complex stakeholder dynamics, and the ethical imperative to act despite incomplete information. The WildTeam framework breaks projects into five phases (Plan → Fund → Prepare → Implement → Close), guided by four principles that help teams adapt to changing conditions while maintaining focus on conservation results.

Managing stakeholder relationships in conservation comes with its own vocabulary. Whether you're reading through a stakeholder engagement plan for the first time, trying to understand what your project manager means by "joint agreement", or need to explain the difference between a Partner and a Provider to your team, this glossary provides clear definitions of essential stakeholder engagement terms.