Each Symposium will focus on specific contemporary issues, but the broad focal areas are:

• Protected area management effectiveness
• Management of protected areas and buffer zones
• Transboundary conservation
• Conserving in the face of global change
• Understanding and managing ecological and evolutionary processes
• Threatened species conservation
• Conservation genetics
• Advances in monitoring and surveillance
• Mitigating threats to biodiversity - wildlife crime and invasive alien species
• Biodiversity economy, ecosystem goods and services, and resource economics
• Land-use and conservation planning
• Securing critical biodiversity areas
• Co-management of protected areas and biodiversity
• Integration of cultural heritage and biodiversity management
• Effective communication
• Legal, policy and ethical issues
• Implementation of biodiversity-related multilateral environmental agreements