This interaction is possible through several venues. For example:
- Our popular webinar series on cutting-edge methods for conservation and management reaches more than 2,500 practitioners per year.
- Since 2006, our training program has led in-person training workshops for coastal and marine decision-makers on the use of methods and tools for conservation and management.
- We provide customized training and consulting services to local planners and managers to address their specific needs and help them choose tools, as well as work flows and processes for using tools effectively.
- We analyze and synthesize vast amounts of tool information to select appropriate tools for tool user groups and to develop tailored “toolkits” to address a suite of EBM issues. We make this tool information freely available via our database and through our highly regarded publications.
- We host a listserve for practitioners that connects you directly to a wealth of expertise, advice, and support—your colleagues!
Feedback from EBM webinars
"You and your colleagues continue to astound me with all you great products and services. Webinars are a great thing for all of us in far flung, small communities."
"Thank you so much for putting these sessions together. There is no way that as an NGO in a developing country we can access this type of learning any other way. And absolutely no chance the local NGO’s will ever get the info unless it is provided for free by the experts."
"I found the webinar very useful. Having access to high caliber speakers without having to make time and find money to travel to a conference is amazing."
"I work mainly to provide scientific information to policymakers. I use the network to research tools that policymakers might use to better meet their objectives. I think the Network does a great job—professionally and thoughtfully run. They put a lot of thought into how best to allocate their efforts and they listen to what people want and are looking for. They’re accessible—seem to want to hear from everybody and they make that clear."
Feedback from webinar presenters
"I was just looking at the stats from yesterday’s webinar and was shocked to see that 130 people from 13 different countries attended. That blows my mind! Is attendance to webinars usually that high/diverse? You are doing such valuable work, helping us reach that many people."
"As a result of the EBM Tools Network webinar we presented, we're now doing trainings about analyzing social networks for projects working with watershed groups in the lower Hudson Valley, isolated resource-dependent coastal communities in the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, and the ecological and cultural sustainability dynamics of the Kalahari bushman community. If not for the network, none of this activity would ever have occurred."
Feedback from EBM database users
"It is great to find all those tools gathered in one place to look through."
"I find the information very enriching and well-organized. It is always up to date regarding new tools coming. I browse through the website and find lots of options."
"We recommend the EBM Tools Network to our managers and stakeholders in our conservation sites throughout the country. We encourage them to check out the website and try the modeling software available that suits their needs. Since our approach to conservation is science-based, we highly suggest they try the network tools. The Network is a rich source of information especially on marine and coastal conservation models [for the] country’s geographic characteristic."
"The Network’s utility for me is the information it provides; that it’s a repository for the kinds of info that we need. I like that all these tools are collected in one place—saves a lot of time."
"The Network helps me keep myself updated in technological advances, methodologies, and techniques for conservation work."
Feedback from Listserv participants
"Participation in the Tools Network has been an incredibly valuable experience for me. I've learned about a great variety of tools I didn't know were available. I've talked with many people working on concerns similar to mine, which has broadened my perspective and given me new ideas. And I've developed new collaborations that may not have been possible otherwise. Thank you! It’s a great initiative that helps rapidly advance the use of tools."
"I received a lot of fantastic responses from people on EBM list...I am in the process of checking out all the websites now and compiling a table and literature review which will then form a paper down the track."
"...[T]he recent conversation among various folks regarding connectivity was great to see. A question is posed about what is available, within days several tools and papers are provided by a range of reputed people, and the original researcher posing the questions is right up to speed ... The thought that watching this conversation triggered in me was ‘I wonder what the financial value of this might be?’. Without the Tools Network enabling that conversation we would undoubtedly have had a researcher spending a huge amount of time searching the background and probably ending up with spending a lot of resources reinventing several wheels. Not to speak of the more difficult to quantify benefits of delivering scientifically credible answers to ocean management questions more quickly."
Feedback from training workshops
"Congratulations to the organizers, trainers, and presenters as this was one of the best workshops I’ve attended."
"Great training workshop. Thanks very much. The folks in my lab got a lot out of it, and I learned some exciting things about implementation needs that will shape my research directions for many years."
"Overall I found the workshop extremely useful for networking, knowledge acquisition and brain and spirit stimulation."
"I have limited time to keep abreast of development of technological tools, and … getting a flavor of the types of things that are now possible helps spur my imagination in designing projects."
Feedback from the literature
"The EBM Tools Network is a good example of a ‘boundary organization’: it works at the boundary of science, policy-making and practice and facilitates the communication among them. Boundary organizations play significant role in providing adaptive solutions for complex problems, like most of the problems we face in conservation, biodiversity or other natural resource management or increasing the resilience of stressed social-ecological systems. The EBM Tools Network offers an impressive searchable tools database, case studies, news, and trainings. It is, however the regular webinars that would be most attractive to CEC Members… Mirroring the ‘boundary’ nature of EBM Tools Network, learners – and their questions - represent a diverse group of stakeholders ranging from research students, educators to protected area managers from all over the world. Even if your work is not directly related to EBM, these webinars give you the sense of the latest and greatest approaches tested in real conservation projects, and offer you the opportunity of exploring the role of educators, sensu lato, in contributing to the successful implementation of EBM tools.”
-IUCN Commission on Education and Communication (2010)
"Place-based planning tools (e.g., Marxan, InVEST, MarineMap, EcoSpace, NatureServe Vista) provide enormous opportunities for EBM education and implementation. Interested readers can find descriptions of these tools and illustrations of their use at the EBM Tools Network."
-Science (2009)