This selection of how-to guides, decision support tools, syntheses of best practices, and other resources represents a small subset of USAID’s body of knowledge on the practice of conservation.  Please use the Development Experience Clearinghouse to find additional resources, including evaluations and project reports, specific to a sector, threat, approach or country.

Learn how USAID is fighting wildlife crime more effectively through better project design and monitoring.

Program Design and Management

• Biodiversity and Development Handbook [2015] 280 pages.
  A foundational resource for implementation of USAID’s Biodiversity Policy, the Handbook provides guidance on required and recommended steps in the design and adaptive management of USAID biodiversity programs, summarizes the state-of-the-art in conservation approaches, and describes how conservation intersects with other development sectors. 
• Measuring Efforts to Combat Wildlife Trafficking: A Toolkit for Improving Action and Accountability [updated March 2017] 76 pages
  Developed for any organization concerned with poaching and illegal wildlife trade, this toolkit recommends indicators for monitoring  progress and effectiveness of ten major strategic approaches for combating wildlife crime. A situation model and theory of change diagrams are included, both as tools used to identify where monitoring is needed most, and as useful resources for host government, implementing partners and donors engaged in program design and proposal review.
• Integrating Biodiversity and Climate Change Adaptation in Activity Design [July 2015] 60 pages.
  This brief identifies lessons learned from existing integrated activities, lays out a set of best practices for integration, and provides recommendations that can be implemented at various stages of the USAID program cycle to achieve appropriate and effective integration. It was informed by, and includes, case studies of USAID-supported activities in Nepal, Ecuador, Southern Africa and Southeast Asia.

Fisheries and Marine Protected Areas

• Sustainable Fisheries and Responsible Aquaculture:  A Guide for USAID Staff and Partners [June 2013]  148 pages.
• Designing Marine Protected Area Networks to Achieve Fisheries, Biodiversity, and Climate Change Objectives in Tropical Ecosystems: A Practitioner Guide [February 2013]   35 pages.
• Biophysical Principles for Designing Resilient Networks of Marine Protected Areas to Integrate Fisheries, Biodiversity and Climate Change Objectives in the Coral Triangle [2012]
• Integrating Fisheries, Biodiversity, and Climate Change Objectives into Marine Protected Area Design in the Coral Triangle [2012]

Landscape and Seascape Conservation

• Guidelines for Assessing the Strengths and Weaknesses of Natural Resource Governance in Landscapes and Seascapes [June 2013]
• An Introduction to Marine Spatial Planning [February 2013]
• Global Conservation Program Document Collection [2010]
• Approaches to Landscape- and Seascape Scale Conservation Planning [October 2009] 
  A comparison of approaches taken by USAID partners in the Global Conservation Program.  Descriptions of partner approaches are in the same issue of Oryx.

Forests and Conflict

• Forests and Conflict: A Toolkit for Intervention [2005]  31 pages.
• Conflict Timber: Dimensions of the Problem in Asia and Africa [2003] Volumes 1-3.

USAID Tropical Forest and Biodiversity Analyses

This new guide is designed to help procure and conduct Tropical Forest and Biodiversity Analyses that more effectively encourage all sectors to consider, value and in some cases support biodiversity and forest conservation.

• Best Practices Guide: Foreign Assistance Act Sections 118/119 Tropical Forest and Biodiversity Analysis [Feb 2017] 54 pages.
  This new FAA 118/119 Tropical Forest and Biodiversity Analysis Best Practices Guide provides practical "how-to" advice for USAID staff and contractors conducting the analysis. The best practices guide promotes a standardized application of best practices to assist missions with preparing for, managing, conducting and using the 118/119 analysis and better aligns the analysis with new requirements in USAID’s ADS Chapter 201: Program Cycle Operational Policy.