Connectivity Conservation - Relationships between Science, Governance & Practice, by Carina Wyborn.
With the impending passage of the National Wildlife Corridor Plan through cabinet, connectivity conservation has been launched front and centre as a climate change adaptation strategy for biodiversity conservation.  Motivated by the science of conservation biology, these initiatives seek to overcome social, institutional and ecological fragmentation.
Drawing on two regional cases of large-scale bio-links, one in Australia and one in North America, this presentation will examine the relationships between the science, governance and practice of connectivity conservation. Both cases faced early challenges to their legitimacy due in part to a disconnect between science and governance at the local scale. Issues of scientific uncertainty and fraught local politics call into question assumptions that the processes of governance will neatly unfold across scales.  
By exploring the challenges of coherence and coordination across scales, these cases demonstrate the multifaceted and often inconsistent nature of relationships at the nexus of science, governance and practice.
Carina is near completion of a PhD at the Fenner School of Environment and Society. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist with a research focus on the social dimensions of environmental change and collaborative approaches to connecting science with policy and practice. Her PhD was funded by Land and Water Australia and the CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship. Carina will be starting a post doc at the University of Montana in December on a project examining rural vulnerability and adaptive capacity to climate change in the Rocky Mountain West.