Language barriers in conservation: consequences and solutions

Language barriers have long been perceived as the English barrier faced by non-native English speakers, resulting in the lack of a concerted effort to solve the problem from within the community.However, language barriers can have serious implications for scientists, both native and non-native English speakers, the science they produce, and how science is applied to addressing global challenges and communicated to the wider community.We elaborate on how language barriers can impede evidence-based conservation in three major ways, and provide solutions for individuals, institutions, journals, conferences, and funders in promoting a more multilingual, equitable, and thus more effective conservation.We urge the conservation community to implement the proposed measures, thereby promoting a more multilingual, equitable, and thus more effective biodiversity conservation. Language barriers can severely hinder the advance of conservation science and its contribution to addressing the biodiversity crisis. We build a framework for understanding how language barriers can impede the evidence-based conservation of biodiversity in three ways: barriers to (i) the generation of evidence by non-native English speakers; (ii) the global synthesis of evidence scattered across different languages; and (iii) the application of English-language evidence to local decision making. We provide evidence, building on a growing body of literature, that quantifies the three consequences of language barriers in conservation. We also propose a checklist of solutions for reducing language barriers in conservation by addressing language disparities among scientists, promoting linguistic diversity in conservation, and making conservation science and its communication multilingual. Language barriers can severely hinder the advance of conservation science and its contribution to addressing the biodiversity crisis. We build a framework for understanding how language barriers can impede the evidence-based conservation of biodiversity in three ways: barriers to (i) the generation of evidence by non-native English speakers; (ii) the global synthesis of evidence scattered across different languages; and (iii) the application of English-language evidence to local decision making. We provide evidence, building on a growing body of literature, that quantifies the three consequences of language barriers in conservation. We also propose a checklist of solutions for reducing language barriers in conserva