Local Plant and Insect Conservation Evaluated with Organizational Identity Theory

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please see the manuscript attached with my detailed comments. Overall, however, I find that your paper does not accomplish what you outline in your conclusions. OIT is not explored clearly, particularly in your consideration for how appropriate it is for this system and what it contributes to evaluations already happening within CZBG. Your results are extremely general and could have easily been accomplished with a simple review of the project information already available. You do not explore how any of this is actually relevant to long term outcomes and you do not explore the potential impacts or challenges of collaborative conservation in any meaningful way. Finally, your results are so general that I don't think you make a sound case for them being helpful to CZBG or other gardens/zoos. You need to go back to your data and your literature review and really delve into how this can be meaningful in a way that warrants a peer-reviewed article for a wider audience.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,  

We are grateful for the opportunity to resubmit this manuscript after integrating your thorough comments and suggestions. Thank you for your extensive time and effort identifying many opportunities to improve the clarity of the text and usefulness of the methods.  

We took the time to go line-by-line through the paper to adjust accordingly based on your many comments. We thank you for the helpful suggestions and hope you agree that the paper is much improved.  

We are grateful for your suggestions to provide more details throughout the paper, e.g., describing the theoretical framework into the methods section. We feel the extensive changes have smoothed the Introduction section, made the Methods more replicable, the Results more engaging, and the Discussion more relevant to readers. Your requests and all comments and suggested edits have been incorporated and resolved into this improved manuscript.  

We took the time to better describe the five case studies in the text of the manuscript and fleshed out the results section so that the take-aways are much clearer. We added much more detail about OIT and demonstrate how the OIT evaluation tool goes beyond a logic model and provides a useful guide for assessing organizational progress through project level reflections.  

Additionally, we added a new subsection to the Results section in order to help the opportunities for improvement highlighted by the OIT framework stand out to the readers. We hope you agree this is much improved.  

Lastly, we agreed with your suggestion to make the Discussion less general and added much more specific information to add richness to the projects. We hope you agree this makes the paper much more relevant to the readers at other zoos and botanical gardens.  

Thank you for your help preparing this manuscript for publication. We look forward to hearing from you about your perspective on these major revisions. 

Sincerely,  

Lily Maynard, Ph.D. 

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an excellent example of using case studies and an evaluation framework. The authors examine five programs (case studies) at CZBG using OIT framework to determine strengths and areas of improvement. As I work in a similar organization on conservation programs, I found it an interesting read. My one major take-a-way, however, was that CZBG has good conservation programs. Which, I think, in a paper such as this, the focus or conclusion should be more outward facing. The authors mention in several places that they present how other zoos and botanical gardens can lead conservation, but I do not see this throughout the paper. They say (even in the title) that collaborations “catalyze” these conservation programs, but that was not the focus of the OIT analysis. I think there is a real opportunity (and not too intensive in edits) to weave in some key take-a-ways for other zoos and botanical gardens. Perhaps they could even be highlighted in some way among the descriptions of CZBG programs. Overall, I was happy to read this and impressed with the work of CZBG. 

Comments: 

• Second paragraph of the Introduction: another key challenge in plant conservation is the “plant invisibility” or less public interest, as opposed to charismatic fauna 

• First line of section 1.3: “Conservation issues can be complex” is a very vague statement. The authors could elaborate on what complexities (or category of complexity) they are referring to.  

• For methods (and starting at the end of the introduction): There should be a little more detail on (1) Why OIT was chosen, and (2) how were the programs chosen. Key questions that I have: 

• Can the authors give an example or two of evaluation frameworks they did not chose, and why?  

• Since one of the stated conclusions is that collaboration is key to conservation, there was no mention of how this factored into the selection of case studies. They mentioned that the programs selected needed to have direct involvement of key staff, but nothing about collaboration. What would the analysis look like if there was a program evaluated that was not centered on collaborative efforts? 

• How many programs were considered in the complete census? (Line 4 of Section 2.2.) 

• There is a bit of redundancy in the introduction where the authors state that they selected OIT at least three times. (3rd paragraph in 1.4, start of 5th paragraph in 2.2). This could be streamlined. 

• Table 1: The last sentence under ABB seems to either not be part of the central construct of this particular program or should be explained better.  

• This may be able to be rectified by the journal, but Table 2 is a mess. If it cannot be fixed by formatting to fit within the pages, the authors should consider another way to display these points. Perhaps it could be broken down more, similar to the central constructs in Table 1.  

• Second line of Discussion: I did not really see any analysis in the manuscript about opportunities for adaptation.  

• In the third and sixth paragraphs of the discussion, the authors state that all four coexistence goals were present in the constructs, but I did not understand this to be the case. The authors state elsewhere in the paper, for example, that the ABB program cannot really mobilize. 

 

Minor editorial details: 

• Is there a requirement for the order of in-text citations for this journal? There are a few lists that are seemingly not organized by publication date or alphabetically. Please check to ensure some type of consistency. 

• The indentations of the paragraphs vary from one tab to two. Section 1.2 is a good example of this. 

• Third paragraph of 1.2: Abbreviation should be introduced on first mention, which is at the start of the paragraph.  

• There are inconsistencies throughout in use of capitalization – especially in reference to the “conservation impact strategic plan” which is referred to by different names and capitalized only some times. Is the “Organizational Conservation Impact Strategy” the same thing as the “conservation impact strategic plan” and “CZBG strategic plan?” Also, if this is published, even on a website, could it be cited? 

• See also “zoo staff” on page 6 in the coexistence goals section 

• There is a font change in section 2.2 

• Top of page 6 – what is CREW? This has not been introduced yet 

• The citation for “Sharber 2021” is out of format.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,  

We are grateful for the opportunity to resubmit this manuscript after integrating your detailed comments and suggestions. Thank you for your extensive time and effort identifying many opportunities to improve the clarity of the text and usefulness of the methods.  

We took the time to go line-by-line through the paper to adjust accordingly based on your many comments. We thank you for the helpful suggestions and hope you agree that the paper is much improved.  

We are grateful for your suggestions to provide more details throughout the paper and make the conclusions more outward facing. We feel the extensive changes have smoothed the Introduction section, made the Methods more replicable, the Results more engaging, and the Discussion more relevant to readers. Your requests and all comments and suggested edits have been incorporated and resolved into this improved manuscript.  

We took the time to better describe the five case studies in the text of the manuscript, and fleshed out the results section so that the take-aways are much clearer. This includes your suggestion to highlight how the partnerships drive the projects and how this represents the organization’s identity overall. We added much more detail about OIT and demonstrate how the OIT evaluation tool goes beyond a logic model and provides a useful guide for assessing organizational progress through project level reflections.  

Additionally, we added a new subsection to the Results section in order to help the opportunities for improvement highlighted by the OIT framework stand out to the readers. We hope you agree this makes the paper much more relevant to the readers at other zoos and botanical gardens.  

Thank you for your help preparing this manuscript for publication. We look forward to hearing from you about your perspective on these major revisions. 

Sincerely,  

Lily Maynard, Ph.D.