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