Resources

“The question that was always asked of us: ‘You have such a big territory and if you get land rights, how are you going to manage that?’” recounted Andre Verhoogt, the Mulokot Foundation’s Managing Director. “The answer that the Indigenous would give and still give is: ‘We have been managing it for thousands of years.’”

Translating their ancestral guardianship in ways western governments or institutions could understand required new tools. This was the impetus for Guardian Connector: to co-create an open-source data integration and monitoring platform that positions Indigenous Peoples to collect, manage and own data about their territories on their own terms.

Sometimes a very specific question from a partner opens up a much bigger area of work.

That happened this week with the Mulokot Foundation in Suriname. What started as a conversation about iNaturalist turned into a broader exploration of biodiversity data from the Wayana Territory: where it goes, who holds it, who has collected it, and how communities can have greater visibility and control over it.

It also became a good example of how we work at Conservation Metrics: a combination of advisory support, hands-on technical accompaniment, and tool building, all emerging from concrete partner needs.

Seabirds, the IUCN Endangered Palau Ground Dove (Pampusana canifrons), and other native species have significantly increased in number thanks to a successful restoration campaign on Ulong Island, Republic of Palau in the Western Pacific Ocean. The acoustic data, processed by Conservation Metrics, shows a dramatic increase in bird calls across the project site. Trail cameras also captured footage of Endangered Palau Ground Doves safely navigating the forest floor.

Climb above 400 meters in the Solomon Islands and the air changes. Clouds drift closer. Trees grow dense with moss, and the ridges carry an unmistakable weight of history. These are the Sky Aelans—sacred highlands that hold ancestral shrines, origin stories, and the cultural identity of the people who live nearby. Protecting them means safeguarding both biodiversity and culture.

While there is a wealth of spatial data and tools available to support forest protection, these resources often remain inaccessible to the communities that need them most. To bridge that gap, Conservation Metrics, along with UNDP, the Equator Initiative, NASA, Nature4Climate, Awana Digital, Rainforest Foundation US and Global Forest Watch, developed an online, self-paced certificate course to equip Indigenous and frontline communities with foundational knowledge and practical skills to map, monitor, and manage their forests.

Carle, R. D., Fleishman, A. B., Valela, T., Angulo, P. M., Rodt, G. De, Hodum, P., Colodro, V., López, V., Gutiérrez-Guzmán, H. (2021). PLOS One, 16(7), 1–24

Drummond, B. A., Orben, R. A., Christ, A. M., Fleishman, A. B., Renner, H. M., Rojek, N. A., Romano, M. D. (2021). PLOS One, 16(7), 1–17.

Fleishman, A.B., Orben, R.A., Kokubun, N., Will, A., Paredes, R., Ackerman, J.T., Takahashi, A., Kitaysky, A.S. and Shaffer, S.A. (2019). Environmental Science & Technology, 53(22), 13398-13407.

Gilmour, M. E., Holmes, N. D., Fleishman, A. B., & Kriwoken, L. K. (2019). Marine Pollution Bulletin, 142(April), 282–289.

Gilmour, M. E., Hudson, S. A. T., Lamborg, C., Fleishman, A. B., Young, H. S., & Shaffer, S. A. (2019). Science of the Total Environment, 691, 631–643.

Gray, P. C., Fleishman, A. B., Klein, D. J., McKown, M. W., Bézy, V. S., Lohmann, K. J., & Johnston, D. W. (2019). Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 10(3), 345–355.

Orben, R. A., Fleishman, A. B., Borker, A. L., Bridgeland, W., Gladics, A. J., Porquez, J., Sanzenbacher, P., Stephensen, S. W., Swift, R., McKown, M.W., & Suryan, R. M. (2019). PeerJ, 7, e6721.