This article offers insightful discussion on opportunities, shortcomings and challenges of integrating social, economic and biological concerns into conservation, focusing on research in ecosystem services and efforts in community-based conservation. Though there has been progress in integrating development, conservation and economics, their synergies are often idealized. In reality, there are deficiencies in these programs that must be recognized and researched in order to achieve the goals of integrating social wellbeing and economics into conservation.  The authors question how to best proceed in these efforts and offer discussion on ecosystem services research community-based conservation efforts, differences between social and natural science scholarship, and the distribution of conservation’s costs and benefits. The conclusion urges efforts for conservation biologists and social scientists to find ways to communicate more effectively and collaborate, despite the differing paradigms often present in their research.