The dynamic human footprint: A measure of conservation success

Conservation organizations are increasingly being held accountable for identifying and documenting measures of conservation success.  Therefore, we propose a new technique to monitor conservation success called the dynamic human footprint.  The dynamic human footprint monitors the change in the human footprint (i.e., landscape measure of anthropogenic activity) over a temporal period within an adaptive management process to identify conservation strategies that provide solutions to conservation problems.  If the dynamic human footprint model shows that implemented conservation strategies mitigate negative human impacts and expand preferred habitat over a landscape, then a potential conservation solution has been found.  However, if the implementation of conservation strategies does not mitigate negative human impacts and preferred habitat continues to decline over the landscape, then new conservation strategies may need to be developed or old ones refined.  We illustrate examples of the human footprint and dynamic human footprint concept using the greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) and ocelot (Leopardus pardalis).