Work done under the broad umbrella term of systematic conservation planning (SCP) has a lot to deliver. In the face of accelerating biodiversity crisis the original SCP concept has been applied and augmented with computational tools that hold a promise of more cost-efficient – and indeed more efficient – conservation while keeping the process transparent and understandable for manager and policy-makers alike. But anyone who as ever worked with real-life conservation problem knows all too well that nagging feeling of “what if we got it wrong”? Working with heterogeneous sets of input data, empirical and/or modeled, seems to be the norm and the massive uncertainties involved are rarely quantified let alone reported. This needs to change. Or at least that is what Langford et. al (2011) think in a very recent opinion paper “Raising the bar for systematic conservation planning” published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution and since the topic is very important for many members of our journal club we spent this Friday’s session discussing the paper – with pulla as always.

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