Why collaboration between scientists and conservation partners enables greater protection of the environment

Addressing the most complex environmental challenges requires deep collaboration between researchers, scientists, and conservation practitioners, along with both scientific and real-world creativity. That’s the goal of the Partnership to Advance Conservation Science and Practice (PACSP), a first-of-its-kind program between the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and Allen Family Philanthropies (AFP), designed to foster deep collaboration between researchers advancing basic science and conservation partners conducting on-the-ground conservation action.

With the announcement of the third year of PACSP grants, we sat down with Dr. Yuta Masuda, director of science at Allen Family Philanthropies, to discuss how collaboration between research institutions and conservation organizations can lead to greater impact tackling the pressing challenges we face to protect, restore, and manage the natural world.

What is unique about the design of this program?

Yuta: Today, scientific research is often done separately from conservation practice. This happens because funders and academic models tend to reward either science-based or conservation practice- and policy-based work, so funding vehicles tend to focus on one, and not both.

The PACSP program is unique because it combines NSF’s gold-standard of scientific review and rigor with AFP’s experience and expertise funding real-world conservation work.

The result is that PACSP creates opportunities for scientists and practitioners from academic and practitioner organizations to co-develop questions and projects together, and the funded projects highlight novel and impactful ideas that employ methods and tools needed to inform policies and practices on the ground.

This partnership approach between funders is essential when designing these kinds of programs because it effectively incentivizes researchers to work closely with conservation practitioners. When we lean into our comparative interests and advantages as funders, we invest in projects that make a greater impact.

Why is it important to fund projects that involve both science and conservation?

Yuta: Solving the most pressing biodiversity challenges requires bold conservation action. Before we act, however, we need to know which methods, tools, and strategies will be most effective at solving the issues at hand.

As an applied science discipline, conservation should ideally be based on evidence-based science. Researchers and conservation leaders need to work together more: scientists bring expertise in developing research plans, thinking about data infrastructure, and the types of analyses that can be done with data. Unlike a laboratory, however, nature is unpredictable and doing things in the real world can be messy and challenging. Conservation partners bring an understanding of what kind of science is impactful on the ground given their knowledge about how decisions and policies are made in communities in order to make significant change.

One of the most amazing things about the scientists I’ve worked with is their emphasis on precision, and the need for more and better data. But in a real-world context, you don't need perfection—you just need enough good data to inform robust, rigorous policies and practices. This balance of stakeholders—scientists, researchers, and conservation partners—lends itself to more productive and effective work as well as more creative problem solving.

How do you prioritize one project location, environmental challenge, or species over another?

Yuta: One of the strengths of the PACSP program is that funding does not have a pre-determined priority in any particular location, species, or environmental challenge. The review process balances impact in terms of advancing science; driving effective conservation; and supporting the broader STEM enterprise through outreach, education, and other methods. It takes a bottom-up approach, where strong relationships between researchers and conservation practitioners are the most valuable, and those groups decide what context to work in and what challenges are most important and why. The priority is the strength of the partnerships and the strength of the idea. We’ve found that those elements lead to the most impact.

How will Allen Family Philanthropies measure the impact of these PACSP projects over time?

Yuta: Since 2023, the PACSP program has funded 25 projects across the nation focused on diverse species and ecosystems, including ecosystem engineers like desert tortoises, key environments like the mid-Atlantic system of barrier islands, and phenomena affecting the entire nation such as wildland fires and wildlife disease.

Due to the broad range of focus areas, there will be a varied set of outcomes, so we’re mostly looking for directional impact—such as publishing new science, deepening the sector’s understanding and knowledge of species and ecosystems, and developing new tools and practices.

With basic science, it’s often hard to predict the ways new knowledge and processes will impact the sector or biodiversity conservation overall: you can paint a picture of what that impact might be, but it’s common that you end up surprised by the serendipitous ways in which novel science—done in partnership—can lead to broader impact.

At Allen Family Philanthropies, we never want to prescribe the way in which impact occurs, but one idea we hold strongly to is that these kinds of projects, when designed well, can lead to really big and positive changes.

What kind of research or results have come from PACSP projects so far?

Yuta: The on-the-ground results of early PACSP projects show great promise. One of the best examples is a project between University of Wisconsin–Madison, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center to develop tools to mitigate white-nose syndrome, a lethal fungal disease that has decimated several species of hibernating North American bats over the past two decades.

The project is valuable not only for bat conservation—since bats provide a number of ecosystem benefits like pollination and insect predation—but also because fungal disease is a growing problem that affects many other species across the nation.

So far, researchers from University of Wisconsin–Madison have published significant findings about how the fungus works in bat cells and leads to infection. In 2024, the research team announced that for the first time they have been able to study in detail how the fungus gains entry and hijacks cells on bats’ skin: the fungus uses infected bat cells as a refuge and prevents the cells from dying, which in turn tricks the bats’ immune system allowing further invasion and growth into more cells.

The researchers found that a key element of this process is like the role human cells play in certain lung cancers, which are treated with an FDA-approved drug called gefitinib. When researchers used this drug in their hibernation model system for the bats, they found it blocks the fungal attachment and invasion. It opens the possibility this treatment could be used to treat white-nose syndrome one day, through collaboration with partners like U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Wildlife Health Center.

These incredible results were made possible through the unique design, and funding, from the PACSP program.

What can others do to support more collaboration between researchers and conservation practitioners on the ground?

Yuta: It’s all about incentives. We need to shift the system and funding landscape so that incentive structures support this type of collaboration. Incentives can be in the form of funding vehicles like the PACSP program, and they could also come through recognition – like awards – or leadership positions. We need more organizations, institutions, and leaders to explicitly reward this type of interdisciplinary and multisector collaboration so that more productive and thoughtful work is done to help protect, restore, and manage our natural world.

What makes a strong proposal?

Yuta: Rigorous research design, demonstrating knowledge of the particular field, and how these fit within a decision context that matters for practice and policy are all very important. The end goal of these projects is on-the-ground conservation work that makes an impact or drives new knowledge and understanding. So, strong partnerships and demonstrating familiarity with the landscape is also important—we want to see that prospective grantees are involving the right stakeholders and partners like state and federal agencies and community partners. Understanding the methods for answering these fundamental questions with a high degree of certainty can make a proposal stand out.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from this program so far?

Yuta: Demand is high for these types of collaborations. We’ve seen many proposals demonstrating strong partnerships between researchers and scientists, the community that understand the issue first-hand, and practitioners that understand the policy and decision-making process involved.

What excites me the most is that the wide range of projects funded so far demonstrates the creativity that exists around solving the complex challenges we face to protect, manage, and restore the natural world.