EcoResilience Initiative is a research project identifying the best ways to prevent species extinctions and promote thriving ecosystems. We don't think biodiversity loss is a top cause area or existential risk, but we think it's nevertheless a good idea to bring EA-style thinking to environmental conservation. What GivingGreen is for climate, we hope to be for biodiversity.

This is an unsorted list of possible interventions for protecting and increasing biodiversity (in the spirit of the Big List of Cause Candidates).  We are not trying to pick out the best approaches, just listing all the ideas we can think of. Please suggest missing interventions for biodiversity. We are looking for quantity over quality here. Our further research will winnow this down to the most effective, neglected, scalable, tractable, etc interventions. 

We plan to keep adding to this list as part of our research at EcoResilience Initiative.

Organized into Solution Types

Mostly this is to make this list easier to read. Don’t read too much into these categories - there’s overlap, they weren’t chosen carefully. 

1. Reducing Land Use
   Habitat loss is the greatest single threat to wildlife. Changing land use might then be the most important lever for keeping biodiversity.
2. Connectivity
   Connectivity is a highly leveraged form of conserved area. By conserving a small “connective” area between two larger areas you boost the ecological value and impact of both areas. E.g. access to other region's resources via an ecological corridor may compliment the needs of the other region.
3. Controlling Populations
   Invasive species (both native and nonnative) are conspicuous forms of habitat destruction. Overpopulated species can result from land management practices (e.g. carnivore extirpation) and can have compounding effects (e.g. forest loss).
4. Intervening in Nature
   The broadest category. It involves trying to improve nature. This currently goes against the standard environmental ethos. This category of effort is avoided because they are magnets for blame. I believe this type of intervention is neglected for faulty reasons.
5. Genetics
   When species are close to extinction these kinds of interventions become more important and practical. Under ordinary circumstances they are too expensive. However, they are rapidly becoming cheaper and more viable. Conservation work is probably not keeping pace.
6. Enforcement/Regulations
   Pollution prevention and other externalities of human activities.
7. Negotiations
   Improving the way we collectively manage our natural resources.

Links below are to short investigations we've done into each intervention for their effectiveness at preventing extinctions.

Reducing Land Use

• Protect land area
• Marine exclusion zones
• Improved crops
• Deep ocean mining
• Nuclear (rather than solar/wind etc)
• Precision fermentation
• Alternative proteins
• Promoting vegetarianism
• Silvopasture by addition
• Solar with agriculture
• Wind with livestock

Connectivity

• Conserving connecting land
• Dam removal
• Fish ladders
• Road under/overpasses
• Fencing improvements
• Fencing off deadly areas

Controlling Populations 

• Herbivore exclosures
• Fertility control
• Biological control
• Manual invasive removal
• Chemical invasive control
• Culling
• Gene drives

Intervening in Nature 

• Artificial biomes
• Habitat conversion
• Combating desertification
• Increasing ice-albedo
• Block canals to create wetlands
• Nature-based solutions
• Keystone species/Ecological engineers
• Water purity (e.g. via oysters)
• Toxin absorption
• Limiting-nutrient provision
• Stream cooling (e.g. from shading)
• Replanting/re-introductions
• Assisted migration
• Disaster refugia
• Feeding (e.g. during famine)
• Stable supply of clean water
• Nest boxes
• Dust baths, mud wallows
• Vaccines
• Wild animal hospitals
• Biochar to reduce nutrient overload
• Soil microbiome inoculation (e.g. from natural areas)

Genetics

• Ex situ
• Biobanking
• Implanting eggs
• Assisted evolution
• Living Arks/Insect zoos

Enforcement/Regulations

• Pesticide regulation
• Fertilizer regulation
• Water purity via enforcement
• Bubble curtains to reduce ocean noise
• Shipping throttling to reduce ocean noise
• Downward facing lights
• Microphones to detect illegal logging
• Enforcement of conserved areas
• Wildlife trade reduction
• Reducing demand for poaching

Negotiations

• Collective agreements
• Indigenous management
• Wild-sourced products/livelihoods
• Ecosystem services payments
• Ecotourism
• Promoting nature appreciation
• Social and financial support
• Common mitigation funds
• Human-wildlife conflict
• Water table management
• Controlled burns

Some criteria: 

1. I am not trying to exhaustively add every intervention, every failure, etc. Nor am I trying to pass a bar of quality before adding them.
2. Ultimately this list is looking to include the most neglected, most effective, most scalable method. I am especially trying to add unusual, scalable, effective, interventions.
3. I have focused on direct interventions rather than second order processes, monitoring or research. Perhaps this is incorrect, but I don’t think so.
4. I am especially looking for interventions that will apply to speedily degrading regions of earth (probably rapidly developing countries in the tropics) rather than rich, highly environmentally conscious and highly denuded countries (Europe).
5. I am especially looking for interventions that will be positive instead of preventative. This is because environmental groups currently favor preventative efforts, so positive action is more likely to be neglected.
6. I particularly want to add interventions that align incentives, because fighting the tide is not likely to be sustainable.
7. I have tried to avoid listing “protecting land” in various forms because I believe it is already the core method of conservation and basically maximally pursued.
8. Similarly I haven't bothered to add carbon and climate change interventions because those are already highly visible and GivingGreen has it covered.
9. I have not listed most kinds of coordination and regulation. This is because I broadly expect them to be difficult and slow. (An uphill battle against many other entrenched parties seeking to steer decision making). These interventions also seem harder to evaluate for success, harder to replicate, harder to scale, harder to categorize and describe. Others who are better equipped than me should add interventions of this kind.
10. My labels leave something to be desired. I’m open to better names and better splits between interventions (currently some are likely duplicates or bucketed poorly)