Five questions to ask before your organisation invests in conservation technology
Technology is now part of almost every conservation conversation. Funders ask about it, partners offer it, and new tools appear every month. Yet across the sector a familiar pattern repeats: equipment that sits unused in a storeroom, a data platform no one has time to update, or a pilot that worked well for one season and then quietly stopped when the grant ended.
WILDLABS data show that acoustic monitoring proficiency fell from 56% to 33% between 2022 and 2024, while use held steady. More teams are using the tools, but fewer feel confident with them.
In my experience, the hardest part is rarely the equipment itself. It is the decision that comes before it. These five questions make that decision clearer. They work for a small community project as well as a large programme, and you do not need a technical background to ask them.
1. What problem are we trying to solve?
Describe the conservation problem, what is not working, and why it matters, without naming a tool. If the first line of your plan is "we need a drone", it is worth starting again. A clear problem makes it much easier to judge whether any option, with or without technology, will actually help.
Try this: write the problem in two or three sentences that a colleague in another organisation would understand, with no product names.
2. Could a simpler approach work as well?
Technology is one option among several. Sometimes a change in process, more training, or better coordination between teams solves the problem at lower cost and with less risk. Give these options the same attention as the tools, and be able to explain what technology makes possible that they cannot.
Try this: next to every technology option, list one or two non-technology options and compare them honestly.
3. Will it work in our conditions?
A tool that performs well in one place can fail in another. Check connectivity, power supply, terrain and whether equipment is available locally for your own sites before any agreement is made. Do not assume something will work because it worked elsewhere.
A short, structured pilot with your own team is the best test, with clear criteria agreed in advance for what needs to work before a wider rollout.
Try this: ask the people who will use it in the field what could stop it working on an ordinary day.
4. What will it take to keep it running?
Set-up costs are usually visible. Running costs often are not. Think about the time, skills and money needed for maintenance, support and, eventually, replacing or retiring the equipment. Ask who will be responsible once the project or grant ends.
It also helps to look closely at the provider. Do current users recommend them? Is the pricing clear? Will they still support the product beyond a single funding cycle?
Try this: estimate the costs for years two and three, not just year one.
5. How will we know it is working?
Decide what success looks like before you choose, whether in your data, your reporting or your conservation results. Then keep checking once the technology is in place. Is it being used as intended? Are the results reliable over time? Is it still the right approach for your needs?
Try this: agree two or three simple measures of success, and set a date to review them.
Bringing the right people in
Across all five questions, one thing makes the biggest difference: involving the people who will use, manage, or be affected by the technology. Field teams, partners and communities often see problems that are invisible from an office, and decisions they help shape are far more likely to last.
Test your own approach
If you would like to see how your team's approach measures up, I've built a free tool, the Conservation Technology Decision Quiz. It takes about five minutes and covers three areas: Decision Clarity, Fit & Feasibility, and Delivery & Performance. It shows where you are in the decision process and what to do next before committing time, funding, or partnerships, with three practical actions for each area. Your full report is sent by email. There is no cost and no obligation.
Take the quiz: https://technology-decision-quiz.scoreapp.com
About me
In the spirit of WildHub's values, I want to be open about my motivations. I run a small consultancy, LRC Wildlife Conservation Consulting, which helps conservation organisations and funders make clear, practical decisions about technology. I've spent 25 years in conservation, from field research and programme delivery to leadership roles in conservation training and capacity development, much of it across Africa. I also contributed to IUCN Tech4Nature's strategic guidance on how conservation organisations, policymakers, and funders evaluate and adopt technology responsibly.
I'd love to hear from you in the comments: which of these five questions is hardest to answer in your work?
Is your organisation's technology decision-making as structured as it needs to be? Conservation organisations face real pressure to adopt technology, often without a clear process for assessing whether it fits their context, capacity, and conservation goals.
The free Conservation Technology Decision Quiz takes five minutes. It scores your approach across three areas: Decision Clarity, Fit and Feasibility, and Delivery and Performance. Results include practical recommendations matched to your score, so you can see where your decision process is strong and what to address first. Start here: Technology Decision Quiz
I work with conservation organisations and funders on structured technology decision-making, the process that determines whether adoption actually works. Twenty-five years in conservation across the Global South. Technology-agnostic, no vendor affiliations.
If your team is navigating a technology decision, evaluating a pilot, or funding organisations that are, I'd welcome a conversation.
BACKGROUND
Dr. Louisa Richmond-Coggan. My career spans field-based ecology, international NGO and policy work, academic leadership, and conservation technology decision-making.
Field career: large carnivore ecology and human-wildlife coexistence research across Eastern and Southern Africa, including as Head of Ecology at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. I led Namibia's National Leopard Census, a multi-stakeholder project whose results fed into national and international policy. I built the Carnivore Tracker app, the first of its kind in Namibia.
Institutional career: BirdLife International, UNEP-WCMC, TRAFFIC International, Earthwatch. Academic Dean at the School of Wildlife Conservation at the African Leadership University. Technology and innovation work with IUCN Tech4Nature, including leading three Innovation Challenge Workshops and contributing to the strategic guidance framework on conservation technology adoption.
The Navigating Web 3.0 Guide: A Tool for Conservation came out of that work. It is a decision-support tool that starts with your conservation goals and operational realities, not the technology. 34 guided questions assess which emerging technologies are worth exploring across four areas: data collection and management, resource allocation and financial management, collaboration and communication, and monitoring and evaluation. Now integrated into the IUCN GSAP SKILLS platform. This guide is where the decision-support work started, and it remains the clearest entry point into conservation technology decision-making for teams new to this field.
Research at the International Conservation Technology Conference, Lima in 2026 confirmed what I had been building toward: the gap in conservation technology is not the tools. It is the structured process for deciding whether, which, and how technology fits an organisation's context.
PhD, Nottingham Trent University. MSc Conservation Biology, Durrell Institute. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. IUCN WCPA Task Force on Human-Wildlife Coexistence. Member of the Nature Tech Collective and Top Tier Impact.
