Dear Ecologgers,
We are developing a survey on attitudes towards tradeoffs in conservation and development, and we would like your help. This is an opportunity to express your opinion about compelling and timely issues. Your participation will allow us to design a survey using actual opinions held by professionals in your field. We are interested in the opinions of anyone who identifies as being professionally involved in conservation or development projects (or both) in any capacity, including through academic research. We would like participation to be as inclusive and representative as possible, and encourage you to forward this email to any other potential participants you know around the world, as well as to relevant listservs. Specifically, we are interested in whether you think tradeoffs exist in relation to biodiversity, ecosystem services, and development. Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems, such as fresh water, disease regulation, and aesthetic value. If you are interested in helping us, please answer the following questions. The first two are necessary for us to be able to use the information you provide, but the other four can be answered to whatever extent you choose. Answers can be in any form, such as lists or paragraphs: 1. What is your profession? · Do you work primarily in conservation, development, or both? 2. How did you hear about this solicitation? · From an individual or a list? If from an email list, which one? 3. What positive or negative relationships exist between biodiversity and ecosystem services? 4. What positive or negative relationships exist between conservation and development? 5. Who benefits from conservation? · What are the social benefits of conservation and where/when do they occur? 6. Who does not benefit from conservation? We would like to know your opinion regarding conservation and development tradeoffs. While this is not a survey, we will incorporate some of the responses that we receive into a survey to be conducted by Advancing Conservation in a Social Context (ACSC, www.tradeoffs.org). ACSC is a research initiative focused on tradeoffs in conservation. At this stage we would like to collect any and all opinions on this topic. If you have an opinion, no matter how unorthodox or obvious you think it is, we would like to read it! Your response will be kept anonymous to all but Maya Kapoor, the research assistant for this project. Your email address will be saved so that we can invite you to participate in the final survey once it has been designed, but your participation now will be helpful whether or not you choose to take the completed survey later. We will also use your email address to send you results from the completed survey. Please email your response to Maya at [EMAIL PROTECTED] by Monday, June 10th, 2008. In addition, feel free to contact Maya if you would like more information about our survey methods and about ACSC generally. Besides email, Maya can be reached at: Arizona State University School of Life Sciences PO Box 4601 Tempe, AZ 85287 Thank you very much for your assistance and participation. Sincerely, ACSC [EMAIL PROTECTED]
