Introduction: basic principles and scope

Conservation management for a threatened species, be it insect or other, has two universal aims:

1. In the short term, to minimise or eliminate its risk of extinction, by removal of threats and increasing its security.

2. In the long term, to provide conditions under which the species can continue to thrive and to retain its potential for evolutionary development, ideally without continuing intensive (expensive) management.

Most attention is given to the first of these objectives, and this is the only one for which most current management plans cater effectively. Species-focused conservation plans, under names such as recovery plans, action plans, action statements, management plans, or some other similar epithet, have been produced as components and drivers of numerous insect conservation programmes. These varied titles imply rather different themes, but contents of the documents overlap considerably in practice, and titles of some may simply reflect the specific wording in different governing regulation or legislations, and the depth of the treatment in the documents that flow from these. And, indeed, the scope of the document may be dictated in principle by the governing legislation under which an insect is listed, with very specific requirements sometimes given. Whatever the name, these documents signal that the focal species has/have in some way been selected or singled out for conservation need or consideration at some level, to promote either protection from decline and loss, or recovery from earlier such losses and to reduce vulnerability for the future. Most commonly, such plans flow from formal listing of the species as ‘threatened’ or ‘protected’ in some way.