Jamie Gundry’s dramatic image of a white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) on the cover of this book reflects the twisting changes in fortune experienced by this species, with a revival that can be attributed to a successful interplay of science, policy and practice. White-tailed eagles were historically much more widely distributed than they are today (Yalden, 2007), once breeding across much of Europe, but by the early twentieth century the species was extinct across much of western and southern Europe. The main cause of its decline was persecution by farmers and shepherds, who considered the eagles a threat to their livestock, but, along with other raptors, white-tailed eagles were also seriously affected by DDT in the 1960s and 1970s, which had disastrous effects on the breeding success of remaining populations.

In the Anthropocene, when our environment is changing rapidly and the windows of opportunity for action to prevent further biodiversity loss are narrow, conservation researchers are increasingly encouraged to think and operate beyond the traditional approaches of producing peer-reviewed papers and presenting results to other members of the research community. Indeed, the perception that researchers belong in their ivory tower, from which they deliver evidence for others to interpret, disseminate and use in decision-making, is thankfully now widely recognised as outdated. The rise of fake news, a deliberate lack of consideration for scientific evidence, and changes to the ways of assessing the value of researchers’ work probably all play a role in supporting this shift in perception. Moreover, for many researchers, the prospect of their work ‘making a difference’ and having an impact on wider society is at least as great a motivation for doing research as generating new knowledge, however interesting that may be.

New and emerging environmental issues make policy and practice difficult. A pressing need to respond when knowledge of the problem is limited is added to an already challenging conservation agenda. Horizon-scanning is an evolving approach that draws on diverse information sources to identify early indications of poorly recognised threats and opportunities. There are many ways to conduct horizon scans, ranging from automated techniques that scan online content and mine text to manual methods that systematically consult large groups of people (often experts). These different approaches aim to sort through vast volumes of information to look for signals of change, for example the rise in microplastics or the use of mobile phones to gather data in remote forests. Identifying these new threats and opportunities is the first important step towards further researching and managing them. This chapter reviews different approaches to horizon-scanning, together with ways of encouraging uptake of scanning outputs. It concludes by introducing emerging technologies that will add value to horizon-scanning in the future.

Fieldwork provides some of my deepest memories, whether exhilarating (being attacked by snowy owls when studying their nests – I still have the multiply ripped jacket), scary (being told the faulty helicopter will probably have to crash land on the pack ice), bizarre (being courted in the dark by a wild, but originally hand-reared, kakapo, who climbed my body and mated with my head), exhilarating (finding the first albatross nest in the North Atlantic – a black-browed albatross courting the gannets in Shetland), satisfying (discovering healthy populations of red-breasted geese when thought to be on the brink of extinction), amusing (being taken for dead by a passing motorist when spread-eagled on a roadside verge, photographing rare plants), disturbing (seeing the all-too-human excitement of chimpanzees nearly killing a red colobus monkey) or breath-taking (the whale shark swimming, mouth-open, directly towards me).