‘Toby Gardner’s excellent book contains many valuable lessons and recommendations on ways to improve forest monitoring, how to promote far better and more ecologically sustainable forest management, and approaches to significantly improve biodiversity conservation programmes… Researchers, policy-makers, and forest managers need to read this book.’ David Lindenmayer, Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University ‘This book provides a highly original review of one of the greatest challenges facing today’s conservation and forestry professionals.’ Jeffrey Sayer, Senior Scientific Adviser, Forest Conservation Programme , IUCN - International Union for Conservation of Nature ‘Toby Gardner’s timely, accessible and much needed book provides a constructive and common sense review of key problems and remedies regarding the future of forest biodiversity. His clear-headed proposals about monitoring and good practice offer a practical guide to improved forest management and conservation. I urge all those concerned with the fate of the world’s forests to read and consider what this book has to say.’ Douglas Sheil, Director, Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation, Uganda, and Senior Research Associate, Center for International Forestry Research, Indonesia The fate of much of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity depends upon our ability to improve the management of forest ecosystems that have already been substantially modified by humans. Monitoring is an essential ingredient in meeting this challenge, allowing us to measure the impact of different human activities on biodiversity and identify more responsible ways of managing the environment. The purpose of this book is to examine the factors that make biodiversity monitoring programmes fail or succeed. The first two sections lay out the context and importance of biodiversity monitoring, and shed light on some of the key challenges that have confounded many efforts to date. The third and main section presents an operational framework for developing monitoring programmes that have the potential to make a meaningful contribution to forest management. Discussion covers the scoping, design and implementation stages of a forest biodiversity monitoring programme, including defining the purpose, goals and objectives of monitoring, indicator selection, and the process of data collection, analysis and interpretation. Toby Gardner is a NERC Research Fellow in the Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK.