An inventory of biodiversity data sources for conservation monitoring

between them”. This will involve using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to enhance connections and interoperability between databases. Conservation agencies need to use data. Conservation agencies, as well as other natural resource managers such as governments, businesses and NGOs, can integrate global data sets into their own monitoring systems to complement site-level, in situ data collection [4], to mea- sure metrics of institutional impact [7, 67] and to enhance impact evaluation [68]. More agen- cies need to use such data, complementing it with their own locally-collected data from projects to monitor progress. This can then replicate at the programme or institution level the same trends in linked indicator sets that are analysed at the global level (e.g. [31, 69]), provid- ing a conservation narrative around increases in pressures and declines in biodiversity state (and often also a decline in ecosystem services and other benefits for people). Further examples of how data can be presented and visualised around a narrative can be found in many of the global status reports (see S5 Table), especially Global Biodiversity Outlooks, Global Environ- ment Outlooks and Living Planet Reports. Stories can be told on, for example: the impacts of commodities on forests (by showing data on commodity production alongside forest cover change for a site, landscape, country or region); the impacts of wildlife trade on species popula- tions (by showing data on species population trends, alongside data on illegal killing and illegal

trade–especially in species such as elephants, rhinos and tigers at national or global scales); the impacts of climate change on reefs (by showing data on greenhouse gas emissions alongside average sea temperatures alongside coral cover); and the impact of overfishing on ocean health (by showing catch data alongside the Marine Trophic Index or Ocean Health Index). Ultimately data need to be used in decision-making, and this can be enhanced by present- ing data in formats that are easy to interpret, such as graphs, maps and dashboards [4, 7, 70]. Work together. Conservation agencies, data providers and database managers need to break out of institutional silos and move away from a focus on agency-specific databases and platforms to collaborate more on coproducing and sharing data. Our inventory shows a huge level of duplication of effort, with different organisations often developing similar data sources or data mapping platforms to each other. This must result in widescale cost inefficiencies and, in effect, the wasting of valuable conservation funding. Concepts such as knowledge coproduc- tion (the collaborative process of bringing diverse knowledge sources and types together to address a defined problem; [71]) and co-construction between knowledge and action [72] should be applied more widely to biodiversity conservation. Identified gaps between different data managers and users will only be bridged through improved co-ordination and collabora- tion [9, 72]. Local and international NGOs, as well as academia and businesses, have a signifi-

cant role to play in supporting government agencies and it is encouraging to see that several global efforts to improve biodiversity monitoring explicitly target high-biodiversity countries [30, 41]. Some of the large biodiversity databases could be useful tools for business throughout project planning and implementation [6, 73], so businesses could in turn share data of use to resource-strapped governments and contribute more to the costs of data source maintenance. Conclusion The lack of access to biodiversity data is a major impediment to adaptive management in con- servation and natural resource management. Managers need to continue to collect primary data for their projects and programmes to monitor progress but, in many cases, their efforts will be enhanced if they can access and use data on biodiversity pressures, states and responses from global sources. Numerous data sources exist and we have identified a preliminary list of some of the potentially most useful, but many are difficult to find, access or use easily. How- ever, if the conservation, science and business communities could make a greater effort to PLOS ONE Biodiversity data sources PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242923 December 2, 2020 9 / 14