Research overview: counterfactual impact evaluation of conservation for felids

Measuring whether a conservation intervention actually helped requires comparing outcomes against a credible counterfactual of what would have happened otherwise. This overview surveys quasi-experimental methods, matching, difference-in-differences, and regression discontinuity, increasingly applied to evaluate whether protected areas, payments, or land-use policies reduce habitat loss in cat ranges. It reviews the data demands and assumptions these designs require. The synthesis frames rigorous impact evaluation as a maturing standard in conservation science, explaining why claims that a program saved tiger forest or jaguar corridor must rest on careful comparison rather than before-and-after anecdote, and how borrowing causal-inference methods from economics strengthens the evidence base for land-use conservation.