People skills for the conservation professional

Conservation scientists are increasingly becoming aware of the importance of the human aspects of conservation, and in conservation circles, ‘‘social science'' is the word of the day. There is a rapidly growing social science working group in the Society for Conservation Biology and it is hard to imagine a conservation project that does not have a strong emphasis on the importance of working effectively with local people. In fact, most of the challenges in conservation biology are not scientific, but diplomatic-in persuading people to follow the advice of conservation science.