Basic principles for a MLA survey:

• Spend enough time with a community to build understanding and trust and adapt to their activity schedule. We suggest a minimum of one month.

• Take time to build up a common understanding of terms: adapt to their words and classifications of land types, resources, values etc.

• Always realize that local people are the experts in a survey that wants to find out ‘what is important to communities?’.

The TREP team used a different approach for the Gorongosa National Park survey. Later they came to Kalimantan to test 'spatial scoring' in Lio Mutai, one of the original MLA villages.