In 2026 biodiversity conservation remains, more than ever, a ‘crisis discipline’ in which

practitioners must reactively enact interventions without sufficient evidence and with limited

resources, to attempt to prevent irreversible change and system collapse. Given the severity of

the challenges faced, conservation practice needs to be informed by the best available

scientific evidence where possible. Unfortunately, a long-standing disconnect between

‘research’ and ‘implementation’ has hindered the dissemination of knowledge into the hands of

practitioners. A branch of research which has historically been detached from on-the-ground

applications is palaeoecology, the study of past environments and how they change over time.

Palaeoecology has significant but often untapped, potential to support conservation practice,

for example, through setting restoration targets based on improved understanding of species

extinctions and reference conditions. Despite this, and a substantial body of applied work,

there remains a disconnect between academia and conservation practitioners for a variety of

reasons, including resource pressures and poor communication.

This research aims to examine the integration of palaeoecology into biodiversity conservation,

primarily demonstrated within a UK context, via a mixed methods, holistic exploration of the

challenges and their solutions. Firstly, it examines the ways in which conservation practitioners

perceive the role and value of palaeoecology through exploring their perceptions of the science

and of existing palaeoecological research. Secondly, it explores how to improve the

applications of palaeoecology to support conservation, through generating case studies from

primary research at three key scales of focus: species, site and habitat. Finally, underpinning

this thesis is the work to enhance the relevance and accessibility of knowledge derived from

palaeoecology for practitioners. This is developed through actionable recommendations, data

visualisation and translation to relevant ecological metrics. The sum of the parts provides a

valuable step towards closing the divide between palaeoecologists and conservation

practitioners.