Frank Weisenberger Consulting uses the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation (Conservation Standards) and its adaptation, Healthy Country Planning, to guide decision-making and prioritisation in project planning. These frameworks, built on the collective expertise of adaptive managers and strategic planning across multiple industries, provide a structured approach to cultural and natural resource management.

The Conservation Standards enable projects to take a systematic approach to planning, implementing, and monitoring initiatives. This method allows project teams to learn from their actions—understanding what works, what doesn’t, and why—ultimately leading to improved and more effective conservation strategies. The Conservation Standards bring together principles and best practices in adaptive and results-based management, offering a unified approach and shared terminology. They are widely used by governments, NGOs, and conservation organisations globally.

Healthy Country Planning (HCP) is an adaptation of the Conservation Standards developed by Indigenous Australians to support adaptive management planning with local communities in a highly participatory process. HCP merges Indigenous knowledge with Western science and provides tools that empower communities throughout the planning process. Healthy Country Planning acknowledges that plans are most successful when those implementing them have been involved in their creation and believe in the outcomes. The approach focuses on engagement, participation, and empowerment by using community-tailored language and facilitation techniques.

The Healthy Country Planning process follows a five-step adaptive management cycle (see Figure 1) that helps project teams identify and prioritise effective conservation strategies. Depending on the community's previous work, the process can be initiated at any stage.

Both Healthy Country Planning and the Conservation Standards incorporate measures and indicators from the outset to ensure objective, consistent, and transparent tracking of intended and actual conservation outcomes, aligning with adaptive management principles.

In Australia, Indigenous Peoples have successfully applied the Healthy Country Planning methodology to develop management plans for Indigenous Protected Areas, co-management frameworks for national parks, operational plans for Indigenous Ranger Groups, and monitoring and evaluation systems that weave Indigenous and Western knowledge.

Linking conservation planning with impact assessment, Healthy Country Plans can inform holistic environmental and social impact assessment frameworks like Development by Design. To learn more about how Development by Design can help Registered Native Title Body Corporates, have a look through this publication and watch this short video of the Nyikina Mangala Development-by-Design project.

Tools

• The Conservation Standards are supported by the Miradi software package. The project management software allows planners and practitioners to design, manage, monitor and adapt their conservation projects and export work and monitoring plans. Miradi Desktop is supported by Miradi Share a cloud-based platform that improves remote collaboration between multiple parties working on CS/HCP projects.

• Remote collaboration tools to facilitate online workshops and virtual meetings;

• Applied methods for data collection in the field (Cybertracker / SMART / Fulcrum)

• Training in Geographic Information Systems (QGIS / ArcGIS) to support decision making.

• Participatory planning tools to facilitate strategic planning processes.

For more information on software solutions, please visit the Resources page.