Abstract
Traditional and local ecological knowledge (TLK) -- the cumulative body of knowledge, practices, and beliefs about the
relationships between living beings and their environment that has evolved by adaptive processes and been handed
down through generations -- holds substantial untapped potential for faunal conservation, particularly in extending
temporal baselines for species distribution and abundance, detecting cryptic or range-restricted species, and informing
culturally appropriate conservation interventions in landscapes where human livelihoods are intertwined with biodiversity.
This review synthesises evidence from 172 primary studies (2000-2025) examining the integration of TLK into European
and global faunal conservation programmes. We evaluate six integration modalities -- historical baseline extension,
species occurrence verification, threat identification, management co-design, monitoring co-implementation, and
governance participation -- across 42 case studies from European pastoral, coastal, and forest landscapes. TLK-based
historical baseline extension increases documented species observation windows by a mean 48.4 +- 18.4 years beyond
scientific survey records, with highest extensions for large mammals (mean 64.4 years) and coastal fish (mean 72.4
years). TLK verification of modelled species distributions corrected false absence predictions for 28.4% of cells in
European large mammal range maps. Community co-designed monitoring programmes show 42% higher volunteer
retention than researcher-designed programmes in paired comparisons. Key barriers -- epistemic validation challenges,
intellectual property concerns, power asymmetries between knowledge holders and research institutions, and absence of
TLK integration standards in EU conservation policy frameworks -- are analysed alongside practical co-production
frameworks. Guidelines for ethical and scientifically rigorous TLK integration in European faunal conservation are
presented.