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About

CA|TS process

How does CA|TS work?

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How does
CA|TS work?

The aim of CA|TS is not to develop a new management effectiveness system or a ranking of tiger conservation areas; rather, it is to tell if an area attains the standards needed to conserve tigers through a credible and independent assessment and review process. CA|TS comprises 17 elements (including one voluntary element for tiger conservation areas with major tourism objectives) divided into seven “pillars” covering different management issues (Table 2).

Five of these are applicable to conservation area management in general (although with a species-specific focus) and represent the Conservation Assured (CA) aspect of the scheme; the two final pillars focus specifically on management issues related to tiger conservation – the Tiger Standards (TS). The scheme is structured this way as it is planned to develop standards which focus on other endangered species in the future. Areas containing several species for which standards exist could thus aim for compliance with a range of species-specific standards; the CA standards, which include general good management practices, would only need to be met once. Each element assessed comprises a number of more specific standards and criteria which are given in Section 6. (Pillar-Table).

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A new approach to tiger conservation

CA|TS Governance

The rapid decline in populations of wild tigers continued despite major investment in their conservation (Damania et al, 2008). This failure forced a rethink in tiger conservation strategies towards a proposal that effort should be
focused on securing tiger populations in a number of key protected areas (GTI, 2011). This proposal was broadly supported at the International Tiger Forum in St Petersburg in 2010, within the broader framework of tiger landscape conservation.

A decision to focus on tigers in conservation areas narrows the priorities of conservation investment to policies and actions that maximize the effectiveness of these areas in securing wild tiger populations. This effectiveness tends to be assumed rather than proven in conservation literature; the small number of detailed studies suggests that this assumption is sometimes over-optimistic (e.g. Craigie et al, 2010). Protected areas are a good strategy for retaining vegetation cover; however their role in protecting animal species is more equivocal and dependent largely on the quality and focus of management. Many studies show that large animal species can continue to decline within protected areas, particularly due to bushmeat hunting or poaching of animals for traditional medicines, trophies, the pet trade and other illegal outlets. The loss of tigers from many protected areas is an indicator of these limitations. Once an animal commands a high market price, as in the case of the tiger, a protected area can provide the ecological framework for survival, but this needs to be backed up by effectively enforced anti-poaching
policies. There is, fortunately, growing expertise in and tools for effective management, monitoring and protection of tigers in conservation areas (WII, 2011). But until CA|TS there was no set of standards and criteria to provide clarity on, or encourage further development and sharing of, best practice management across tiger range countries.

Ensuring effective conservation management

Over the last 20 years several methodologies have been developed and applied for assessing management effectiveness, to enable better understanding of how well conservation areas are being managed and how successfully they ensure conservation objectives are achieved. Many of these assessment systems have been developed to be consistent with the IUCN WCPA Management Effectiveness Framework (Hockings et al, 2006, see Box 1), which has developed guidance on best practice for assessments and has allowed the compilation of results across assessment systems. Around 50 methodologies exist ranging from very simple to more thorough approaches.

The assessment process provides an opportunity for managers and partners to take stock of the effectiveness of conservation areas management. When evaluation is accompanied by the development and implementation of an action plan based on the findings, more effective management should result. Indeed the time-series data (i.e. recurrent assessment results from the same area) collected by a global study of management effectiveness found that in most cases protected areas show improvements in management with each assessment (Leverington et al, 2010). In part this is because repeat assessments tend to be signs of an agency or project’s long-term commitment to both improve and track area management effectiveness.

Outside protected areas effort has been put into agreeing standards for good management and investigating ways in which standards can be encouraged through certification systems, such as FSC. There are now initiatives under way to bring these two conservation strategies together.

Setting standards for good conservation area management

Assessment and certification systems differ in the extent to which they provide information on success or failure; some give a "score", others a simple pass/fail, while others rely on a more general description of management strengths and weaknesses. The usefulness of assessments, and implementation of results, can often be improved if there is a clear understanding of what managers should be aiming for, by agreeing some basic standards against which to judge an assessment.

The importance of this standard setting has been reinforced by the CBD, which requested the development of standards for protected areas in its Programme of Work on Protected Areas.

As a result of the new emphasis on standards, voluntary assessment and certification schemes based on compliance with management standards have begun to be developed for protected areas. The IUCN Green List (see Box 2) is a major new initiative in this field, for instance.

The CA|TS Process

The CA|TS Registration and Approval process

Areas taking part in CA|TS will be either CA|TS Registered (but standard not yet attained) or CA|TS Approved (i.e. areas which have been assessed as achieving the standards). The registration and approval process has 10 steps outlined below and summarized in Figure 2.

Registering for CA|TS:

  1. CA|TS is a voluntary process; any area that wishes to be assessed against CA|TS should first download the CA|TS Log software and manual from the CA|TS website (www.conservationassured.org) and fill in the engagement form. The CA|TS Partnership will work with government agencies and area managers to introduce the CA|TS process and help with registration.
  2. Once the registration process has been checked by the national committee the area will receive a certificate from the management team to confirm the area is CA|TS Registered. The area will be listed on the CA|TS website as CA|TS Registered and can use the CA|TS Registered logo (see Section 4).
  3. . If the national committee does not think the area is ready to be registered it will send a full explanation to the area as to its reasoning. If required, it will work with the area to help fulfil the registration requirements so the area can revise and resubmit the registration document

Moving towards CA|TS approval

  1. After becoming CA|TS Registered the area will undertake a self-assessment of whether tiger conservation and management meets the criteria set out in CA|TS. The assessment is completed using the CA|TS Log software. Full details on accessing and using the software are given in Box 4. The standards and associated criteria are given in Section 6 of this manual and are fully replicated in the CA|TS Log. An evidence checklist of the type of information that can be referred to (see Section 7 for a summary of the evidence required) and guidance notes which elaborate some of the more specific criteria are also included in Section 6.

    When areas have provided suitable evidence for each CA|TS criteria and reported this using the CA|TS Log, they submit the file (i.e. the CA|TS dossier) to the national committee and forward a copy to the CA|TS management team for review.
  2. When the national committee is satisfied that the area has provided the evidence base in the CA|TS Log to demonstrate compliance with CA|TS it will oversee two auditing processes: i) of the areas self-assessment and ii) of the processes in reaching the compliance decision. The national committee will engage an independent reviewer (see TOR in Section 11) to undertake these audits. The reviewers will be provided with access to the dossier on the CA|TS Log software via email and will receive full instructions on how to upload the dossier and use the CA|TS Log software to record the results of their review. In most cases it is expected that reviewers will need to visit the site to complete the review. The reviewers will be expected to look review all the evidence (e.g. narrative, documents loaded, pictures etc) provided in the CA|TS log for each criterion and assess:

    i. The quality of the evidence, and whether it is poor or strong (see Section 7 for suggested indicators of evidence quality).
    ii. Whether the evidence provided is sufficient to show compliance with the criteria (see box 5 for reporting compliance).

  3. In some cases this process of dossier submission and review may happen multiple times, particularly in areas where considerable interventions are need to build management capacity to the level of good practice outlined in CA|TS. In these cases the national committee may wish to employ the CA|TS Merit System (see box 3) to award sites who are progressing towards to the CA|TS standards.
  4. When the independent reviewer is satisfied that the area has reached a good level of compliance with the standards and criteria, the national committee will undertake a review of the dossier on the CA|TS Log. If they are satisfied that compliance with CA|TS has been reached they will record their opinions on the CA|TS -Log and forward the compliance dossier to the CA|TS management team who will convene a meeting of the international executive committee which, to ensure equivalence of CA|TS implementation across the tiger range, will make the final decision on being awarded CA|TS Approved status. A representative of the national committee and/or the independent reviewer will usually present the dossier to the international executive committee meeting. It is expected that the international executive committee will normally endorse the national committee’s recommendation.

    If the international executive committee has questions, additional requirements or concerns regarding the compliance of the area to CA|TS, it will send (via the management team) a full explanation to the national committee as to its reasoning and actions needed to resolve these.
  5. Once the international executive committee awards CA|TS Approved status, the area will receive a certificate from the management team to confirm CA|TS Approved status. The area will then be listed on the CA|TS website as CA|TS Approved and can use the CA|TS Approved logo (see Section 4).
    The Approved status will remain in place (subject to a regular review process outlined in Section 9 or if major problems arise seriously impacting tiger populations as outlined on page 8) for the life of the CA|TS scheme.