Since 2004, the Conservation Campaigns Team (CCT) at The Nature Conservancy has commissioned 3 national political polls from the bipartisan duo of Lori Weigel, Public Opinion Strategies and Dave Metz, Fairbank, Maslin, Maulin, Metz & Associates. Following each national poll, CCT has asked the pollsters to synthesize other regional and state polls conducted within the same time frame and propose language recommendations. This is the third edition: Language of Conservation 2013: Updated Recommendations on How to Communicate Effectively to Build Support for Conservation. This memo provides language and messaging recommendations in a list of easy-to-follow, broad “rules” for communication. Some of these rules reinforce long-standing communication guidelines that we have tracked over time. Others reflect today’s changing political and economic context. Across the country, the pollsters have found few exceptions to these guidelines, although they note that it is important to test language  and messages to ensure their effectiveness in a specific state or local area prior to investing in public communication.  ​