The Financial Return from Measuring Impact

In conservation, as in most other subjects, there is a division of expenditure into problem identification, solution testing, and practice. However, research concentrates on problem identification rather than solution testing. We calculate the return on the investment of research (a PhD thesis) examining the effectiveness of conservation interventions for birds of prey in three European countries. We show that the economic return from investing in a PhD thesis could be substantial, in the order of hundreds of thousands euros over 10 years or a return on investment of between 292% and 326% over that period. We derived the values of return on investment by first setting a common biological target (the total number of raptor fledglings produced per year). We then compared overall costs in achieving such target via the wide implementation of the results from the thesis (i.e., allocating resources to the most effective intervention) versus a business as usual scenario. We identify other theses that also show considerable benefits in improving effectiveness. We suggest that further research examining effectiveness would be cost-effective in improving practice.