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32 Protected Area coverage has reached over 15% of the global land area. However, the quality of 33 management of the vast majority of reserves remains unknown, and many are suspected to be 34 'paper parks'. Moreover, the degree to which management can be enhanced through targeted 35 conservation projects remains broadly speculative. Proven links between improved reserve 36 management and the delivery of conservation outcomes are even more elusive. In this paper we 37 present results on how management effectiveness scores change in protected areas receiving 38 conservation investment, using a globally expanded database of protected area management 39 effectiveness, focusing on the 'management effectiveness tracking tool' (METT). Of 1934 protected 40 areas with METT data, 722 sites have at least two assessments. Mean METT scores increased in 41 69.5% of sites while 25.1% experienced decreases and 5.4% experienced no change over project 42 periods (median 4 years). Low initial METT scores and longer implementation time were both 43 found to positively correlate with larger increases in management effectiveness. Performance 44 metrics related to planning and context as well as monitoring and enforcement systems increased 45 the most while protected area outcomes showed least improvement. Using a general linear mixed 46 model we tested the correlation between change in METT scores and matrices of 1) landscape and 47 protected area properties (i.e. topography and size), 2) human threats (i.e. road and human 48 population density), and 3) socio-economics (i.e. infant mortality rate). Protected areas under 49 greater threat and larger protected areas showed greatest improvements in METT. Our results 50 suggest that when funding and resources are targeted at protected areas under greater threat they 51 have a greater impact, potentially including slowing the loss of biodiversity. 52

Aichi Target 11 has galvanized expansion of the global protected area network, but there is little evidence that this enlargement brings real biodiversity gains. We argue that area-based prioritization risks unintended perverse consequences and that the focus of protected-area target development should shift from quantity to quality.

Ensuring that protected areas (PAs) maintain the biodiversity within their boundaries is fundamental in achieving global conservation goals. Despite this objective, wildlife abundance changes in PAs are patchily documented and poorly understood. Here, we use linear mixed effect models to explore correlates of population change in 1,902 populations of birds and mammals from 447 PAs globally. On an average, we find PAs are maintaining populations of monitored birds and mammals within their boundaries. Wildlife population trends are more positive in PAs located in countries with higher development scores, and for larger-bodied species. These results suggest that active management can consistently overcome disadvantages of lower reproductive rates and more severe threats experienced by larger species of birds and mammals. The link between wildlife trends and national development shows that the social and economic conditions supporting PAs are critical for the successful maintenance of their wildlife populations.

Effective conservation management interventions must combat threats and deliver benefits at costs that can be achieved within limited budgets. Considerable effort has focused on measuring the potential benefits of conservation interventions, but explicit quantification of the financial costs of implementation is rare. Even when costs have been quantified, haphazard and inconsistent reporting means published values are difficult to interpret. This reporting deficiency hinders progress toward a collective understanding of the financial costs of management interventions across projects and thus limits the ability to identify efficient solutions to conservation problems or attract adequate funding. We devised a standardized approach to describing financial costs reported for conservation interventions. The standards call for researchers and practitioners to describe the objective and outcome, context and methods, and scale of costed interventions, and to state which categories of costs are included and the currency and date for reported costs. These standards aim to provide enough contextual information that readers and future users can interpret the cost data appropriately. We suggest these standards be adopted by major conservation organizations, conservation science institutions, and journals so that cost reporting is comparable among studies. This would support shared learning and enhance the ability to identify and perform cost-effective conservation.

Protecting important sites is a key strategy for halting the loss of biodiversity. However, our understanding of the relationship between management inputs and biodiversity outcomes in protected areas (PAs) remains weak. Here, we examine biodiversity outcomes using species population trends in PAs derived from the Living Planet Database in relation to management data derived from the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) database for 217 population time-series from 73 PAs.We found a positive relationship between our METT-based scores for Capacity and Resources and changes in vertebrate abundance, consistent with the hypothesis that PAs require adequate resourcing to halt biodiversity loss. Additionally, PA age was negatively correlated with trends for the mammal subsets and PA size negatively correlated with population trends in the global subset. Our study highlights the paucity of appropriate data for rigorous testing of the role of management in maintaining species populations across multiple sites, and describes ways to improve our understanding of PA performance. K E Y W O R D Sliving planet database, management effectiveness tracking tool (METT), protected area management effectiveness (PAME), vertebrate population trends, world database on protected areas (WDPA)