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What makes a successful citizen

science program?

Kerryn Herman

Summary

BirdLife Australia has a long history of working with volunteers across its
conservation programs. Discussion among project managers identified four key
elements that must be considered in order to create successful threatened species
citizen science projects. Data collection and management, participant engagement
and retention, and conservation actions, each direct the project towards the fourth
element, species recovery objectives. How each of these elements function
independently, and interact with each other, will direct the overall success of a
program in terms of species recovery. However, ways of measuring the other
benefits of citizen science projects has remained largely unresolved. This chapter
provides some lessons learned through BirdLife’s ongoing involvement with citizen
science projects.