This is not a bedtime read to understand practical bird conservation, but a very detailed synopsis of what works in practical interventions in bird management. It is the second major output from the Conservation Evidence project which undertakes synopses of published evidence of conservation to analyse what works. It is a very important and useful reference to anybody involved with practical conservation projects for birds. While it is not an easy read, it is a very dense reference book containing details of thousands of projects and showing what interventions have been shown to work around the world. The volume starts with an introduction to the book, a description of how the evidence was compiled and how to use the book. There then follows the evidence reviews broken down into topics. Each section starts with a useful 'key messages' section, followed by reviews of individual evidence in sub-topics. There are sections of threats - such as agriculture, resource use, invasive aliens and pollution as well as positive interventions such as habitat protection, habitat creation and re-introductions.

Each section gives a brief review of the number of studies used in the synopsis and then outlines the results of each published piece of evidence These review either individual papers where only one exists, or goes through a series of papers on one topic, pulling out key information. All sections are fully referenced allowing readers to go to the source research projects. The review covers an incredibly wide range of possible interventions for conservation in over 500 pages. These ranges from topics such as setting longlines at night in order to reduce bycatch, reducing predation by moving nestboxes to habitat creation and re-introductions. Each topic gives a précis of published papers, some background to the problem followed by a detailed review of papers. For example, if I wanted to consider reducing predation of curlew nests - a species I am currently working on - I might consider use of electric fences. The section on this topic informs me that one study in the UK and two in the US showed this intervention was successful for tern colonies, 5 studies in the US showed higher survival at wader and seabird colonies although one study was less positive. The section then gives me details of the studies, along with the original references.

For too long we have been doing not much more that gardening on our nature reserves, and too much conservation has been because that "is what we have always done". We have spent lots on useless projects based on hearsay. This, as the latest synopsis, is an extremely important publication. Hopefully we can start to direct conservation effort based on the evidence of what actually works, and continue to build up detailed evidence by monitoring and publishing results of new techniques. Every conservation manager should have a copy of this, and its associated volumes. As they are available as a free download there is no excuse. Also available on the conservationevidence.com website is an open access journal of recent findings and an ever-expanding database of evidence.

All conservation managers should contribute to this. Too much past conservation has been a nice fluffy exercise which has regularly failed to deliver. Given the current crisis in wildlife declines we need to sharpen our game and for this we need to use the best available evidence. This volume and it associated publications will help us to do this.