Conservation Action Planning

Conservation Action Planning (CAP) has been used by hundreds of projects around the world to develop strategies and measures for place-based conservation. Projects range from marine and land protected areas to large, diverse landscapes and often include multiple partners. CAP was initially developed by The Nature Conservancy, and is a predecessor to and example of the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation.

CAP is not "rocket science," and can be done without any software, using the worksheets provided on this website. However, turboCAP is designed as free, easy-to-use software which automatically produces "scorecards" of Health and Threats and provides numerous helpers along the way.

turboCAP involves answering a few key, straightforward questions:

• Project – Where is the the project area, who is engaged, and why?
• Targets – What do you want to conserve?
• Health – What’s needed for healthy targets and how are they doing?
• Threats – What’s likely to get worse?
• Strategies -- What will you do to conserve your targets?
• Capacity - What 's needed to implement your strategies?
• Measures - What is success for your project?

CAP is an "iterative, adaptive process." At each step, project teams are encouraged to review their thinking and make additions, deletions or amendments to their previous work. "Two steps forward, one step back," as the CAP journey proceeds. The result is a credible plan for action.