Five principles to enhance conversations about conservation.

Conservation is a social process with profound consequences for both nature and people. The social sciences, which study human societies and relationships between individuals and groups within those societies, are therefore uniquely positioned to examine and inform conservation efforts. The past two decades have seen growing recognition that conservation is fundamentally about people and the choices they make (Mascia et al., 2003; Balmford & Cowling 2006; Bennett et al. 2017a). In turn, this recognition has led to the development of conservation social science (CSS)—“the study of the conservation-relevant aspects of human society, including the relationships among humans and between humans and their environment” (Miller et al., 2023)—as a field. Yet the incorporation of the social sciences into mainstream conservation training, policy, and practice remains incomplete. For example, a recent study of conservation higher education in Australia and the United Kingdom found that social science methods training is still absent from most curricula (Slater et al., 2024).