Data collected through biodiversity monitoring are a crucial component of solving any conservation problem. Gaining information about the state of an ecological system can inform better decisions to be made surrounding protections of that system. However, with biodiversity rapidly declining, monitoring can delay much needed action and take up valuable and limited resources, and therefore may not always be the best option. The increasing availability of open data through large data repositories and alternative sources of data such as community science programs means that researchers should not have to compromise between fast action and informed action. In many cases, data already exist that can inform our conservation decisions. Integration can allow researchers to fill perceived spatial and temporal knowledge gaps, and analytical tools are available that can help quantify whether more data are needed. In this symposium, we explore how using open and available data is not simply making the best and most efficient use of limited resources, but can lead to better conservation outcomes. We will investigate how data integration helps improve our understanding of species trends and distributions, better evaluate ecological systems, and redistribute limited resources from monitoring to action. We emphasize why these advances in open data and data integration are critical not only for minimizing data waste, but also conducting better conservation research and directly improving conservation management decisions.