As the rate of human impact accelerates, “A Change Is Gonna Come” for social and ecological systems, requiring more rapid and science-based decision-making. Ecological forecasting — the process of predicting changes in ecological systems and their components with specified uncertainties — is useful to assist decision-makers in responding to environmental and societal concerns, even in uncertain conditions. Today, the recent availability of cyberinfrastructure, open-source data and novel techniques have increased opportunities to generate ecological forecasts. However, to design forecasts that are useful for decision-making, forecasts must not only be reliable but also must account for the interests and needs of decision-makers and those affected by the decision-making process. The challenge of accommodating those needs and interests is formidable as even when best practices for integrating forecasts into decision-making are known, mismatches can still occur between idealized practices and those adopted to build forecasting models. Both the development of strategies to tackle the divide between forecasting and decision-making and the challenges of their implementation need to be addressed across different sectors and levels of government. In this session, we will begin by outlining some of the best practices for bridging the divide between ecological forecasting and decision-making. These proposed best practices were generated by academic, government and industry researchers who have experience building forecasts and/or working with decision-makers. The first talk outlining these practices will serve as a foundation for the session. Each following speaker will focus on a different case study where forecasts were either successfully or unsuccessfully adopted in a decision-making context, and discuss why this outcome occurred. Speakers will highlight practices they perceived to be most beneficial, from using more advanced techniques and quantifying uncertainties, to improving communication and involving decision-makers earlier in the forecasting process, and how successful they were at implementing these practices. As this topic spans across different fields, the speakers in this organized oral session will discuss creating forecasts to address a range of issues, from caribou conservation to pandemic planning. Overall, the session will highlight areas of forecasting where we have better succeeded as a scientific community and where we still must work to close the gap between the idealized version of ecological forecasting and the reality of forecasting for decision making.