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With regard to Dr. Pritchard’s first comment about conservation emergencies, I fully agree. However, I also believe that conservation biologists and policy practitioners repeat too frequently the “conservation science as a crisis discipline” refrain. The case of the Kemp’s ridley may not have been an appropriate case for experiments, but are there no regions of the world in which species such as the green turtle or loggerhead are not (and have not been) in imminent danger of extinction and in which one could experiment with different interventions?

The effect of the crisis approach to biodiversity policymaking is most clearly observed in the case of the United States Endangered Species Act (ESA), a pioneering law for species protection laws established in 1973. Over thirty years after the Act was implemented, diametrically opposed views of its performance exist side-by-side. Supporters call the ESA the crown jewel of the nation’s environmental legislation and an absolutely essential tool for protection biodiversity. Opponents claim that, at best, the ESA is ineffective and costly; at worst, it is perversely damaging to species recovery (because private citizens take pre-emptive actions to destroy habitat and species, and thereby avoid regulations). These two views can co-exist more than thirty years after implementation because the ESA was not designed with the intention of evaluating its effectiveness. It was not until the 1980s that the government began tracking the population status of the listed species, and the government has never selected control species nor collected data on such species. Now the U.S. government is attempting to overhaul the Act with little interpretable data from the past and, most importantly, without the intention of evaluating the effectiveness of the overhauled Act.

With regard to the long time delay between instigation of any marine turtle conservation effort and detectable results on turtle populations, I fully agree that such delays make it difficult to draw inferences in a timely manner. However, I am not convinced that such delays mean that our interventions must simply be guided by “common sense.” Common sense, particularly that held by those untrained in analyzing and affecting human behavior, is not necessarily the best guide to conservation policy. Furthermore, if we must wait many years for unambiguous feedback (as in the case of the U.S. ESA), I believe it would be preferable to know at the end of this period if one or two of our interventions are working so that we can focus or change our efforts for the future. One should also note that our conservation interventions are often targeted at changing human behavior. We certainly can observe changes in human behavior on short time scales and thus should at least be testing whether our interventions aimed at changing human behavior are indeed having the desired effect (e.g., reductions of turtle nest poaching, adoption of new technologies, reduced sales of turtle meat in open markets, etc.). If education efforts, for example, have no measurable effect on behavior, then the issue of whether the change in behavior will have a large effect on turtle populations is moot. One might argue that it can take generations to observe behavioral changes from education, but one then must also explain why such education is worthwhile given conservation funds are scarce and the need for medium-term action is high.

The latter example brings me to Dr. Prichard’s points about the difficulty of evaluating educational efforts. Yes, the outcomes from education are complex and nuanced, but this complexity does not stop other policy fields (health, criminal rehabilitation, poverty reduction) from evaluating the effects of education on outcomes of interest. In my opinion, the too-many-causes-too-many-effects argument simply supports the status quo in which conservation practitioners do not need to be explicit about what they are attempting to do (it also bolsters my argument that experimental conservation interventions are important). An educational program can certainly have multiple effects on a community, some related to conservation and others not. However, if one of the main objectives of the educational effort is to reduce turtle poaching and by-catch and the effort does not achieve these objectives, the effort’s supporters must at least ask themselves, “Why is this effort worth continuing?”

Finally, with regard to Dr. Pritchard’s comments about the use of economic incentives for conservation purposes, his points are well taken, but I have a few comments. First, the strength of community institutions is critical for any successful conservation intervention. Second, there may be some cases of conservation agreements glued together by nothing more than reciprocity (good will), but my experience leads me to believe that, in most cases, such glue is only a short-term solution and tends to crack and fall apart over time without more substantial and tangible incentives (unless the conservation outcome causes little sacrifice). The cases that Dr. Pritchard discusses are useful fodder for the debate, but conservation policy science is too frequently guided by point and counterpoint with case studies from initiatives that were not designed with the intention of being evaluated. Although I believe case studies can be useful, I also believe that we can only move forward if we begin to design at least some of our important initiatives with the intention of evaluating their effectiveness.

The intention of my editorial was not to pretend that well-designed evaluation or the use of direct payments in the context of turtle conservation would be easy or successful. I merely wished to instigate a debate in the turtle conservation community about the reasons why such evaluations and payments are not common. I thank Dr. Pritchard for helping to continue this debate and raise issues that I had not explored in my editorial.