Understanding Complexity.
Strengthening Conservation.
Conservation Dynamics Institute works with conservation organizations, researchers, and communities to bring together data science, spatial analysis, behavioral science, and interdisciplinary research in exploring complex conservation challenges and identifying evidence-informed paths forward.
Understanding Complexity.
Strengthening Conservation.
Conservation Dynamics Institute works with conservation organizations, researchers, and communities to bring together data science, spatial analysis, behavioral science, and interdisciplinary research in exploring complex conservation challenges and identifying evidence-informed paths forward.
Why CDI?
Conservation problems are rarely just ecological problems.
Conservation outcomes emerge from interactions among wildlife, people, landscapes, institutions, resources, and the decisions made within them.
Understanding those systems often requires connecting information that exists across different disciplines, datasets, organizations, and scales.
Conservation Dynamics Institute exists to help make those connections.
What We Do
Connecting data, behavior, and conservation practice.
We work with conservation organizations and partners to investigate complex questions, uncover patterns, evaluate interventions, and translate evidence into practical insight.
Data Science & Spatial Analysis
We transform complex and fragmented information into clearer understanding.
Our work may include statistical modeling, predictive analytics, geographic information systems, spatial analysis, machine learning, data visualization, and the integration of ecological, environmental, and human datasets.
The goal is not simply to analyze data—it is to identify patterns that can inform better conservation decisions.
Behavioral Conservation
Conservation ultimately involves decisions made by people, organizations, and communities.
We apply behavioral and social science to understand the motivations, perceptions, relationships, incentives, and barriers that influence conservation outcomes.
This work can help organizations better understand human-wildlife coexistence, stakeholder behavior, community engagement, adoption of conservation practices, and the human dimensions of environmental problems.
Program Evaluation
Conservation programs have to answer a fundamental question:
Is what we are doing actually working?
We help organizations evaluate conservation programs, interventions, and initiatives by examining outcomes, implementation, and the conditions that influence success.
Evaluation can help identify what works, why it works, where improvements are possible, and how limited conservation resources can be used more effectively.
Research & Evidence Synthesis
Important conservation questions often have evidence scattered across studies, organizations, regions, and disciplines.
We help bring that evidence together through interdisciplinary research, systematic reviews, meta-analysis, quantitative synthesis, secondary-data analysis, and targeted study design.
By connecting what is already known with new analysis, we can identify patterns, uncertainties, and important gaps in knowledge.
How We Work
We begin with the question, not the method.
Our approach is collaborative and interdisciplinary. We work with partners to understand the question, the context, and the evidence already available, then draw on the methods and perspectives best suited to the problem.
Our goal is analysis in service of conservation decisions.
Questions We Explore
Where are human-wildlife conflicts most likely to occur—and can we predict them?
What factors help conservation interventions succeed, what barriers limit their impact, and how can behavioral science help strengthen outcomes?
How can existing data reveal patterns, relationships, or risks that have been difficult to see?
Let’s work together on a conservation challenge
We collaborate with conservation organizations, researchers, communities, foundations, and other partners seeking to better understand complex conservation challenges, strengthen the evidence available to them, and identify effective paths forward.