Funding Extinction? Biological Needs and Political Realities in the Allocation of Resources to Endangered Species Recovery

Restani, Marco; Marzluff, John M.

doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2002)052[0169:febnap]2.0.co;2

Cited by 90 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Although industries are currently held accountable for environmental harm that directly targets humans, such as mercury contamination, harm to biodiversity has been treated as an externality, with costs largely born by taxpayers to recover species after they become imperiled. Additionally, the method of allocating these taxpayer funds among imperiled species has not been science-based (Restani & Marzluff 2002). Our framework provides a science-based tool that regulators and planners can use to develop new regulations and allocate funding to mitigation efforts where they will be most effective for conservation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing threats to species: threat reversibility and links to industry

Prugh

Sinclair

Hodges

et al. 2010

Conservation Letters

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Threats to species' persistence are typically mitigated via lengthy and costly recovery planning processes that are implemented only after species are at risk of extinction. To reduce overall threats and minimize risks to species not yet imperiled, a proactive and broad-scale framework is needed. Using data on threats to imperiled species in Canada to illustrate our approach, we link threats to industries causing the harm, thus providing regulators with quantitative data that can be used directly in cost-benefit and risk analyses to broadly reduce threat levels. We then show how ranking the ease of threat abatement and reversal assists prioritization by identifying threats that are easiest to mitigate as well as threats that are possible to abate but nearly impossible to reverse. This new framework increases the usefulness of widely available threat data for preventative conservation and species recovery.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing threats to species: threat reversibility and links to industry

Prugh

Sinclair

Hodges

et al. 2010

Conservation Letters

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“…Aside from the revenue-generating capacity of flagship species, the preferential funding of conservation actions for these species has been criticized as being subjective and inefficient compared with a cost-effectiveness approach [11,12], and for potentially leading to the neglect of non-charismatic species [13]. In addition, several studies have found that flagship species conservation programmes may have limited effectiveness in conserving other species [14,15], and that species such as large predators (which are often flagship species [6]) may have relatively low utility as 'umbrella' species for conserving biodiversity in general [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biodiversity gains from efficient use of private sponsorship for flagship species conservation

Bennett

Maloney²,

Possingham

2015

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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To address the global extinction crisis, both efficient use of existing conservation funding and new sources of funding are vital. Private sponsorship of charismatic ‘flagship’ species conservation represents an important source of new funding, but has been criticized as being inefficient. However, the ancillary benefits of privately sponsored flagship species conservation via actions benefiting other species have not been quantified, nor have the benefits of incorporating such sponsorship into objective prioritization protocols. Here, we use a comprehensive dataset of conservation actions for the 700 most threatened species in New Zealand to examine the potential biodiversity gains from national private flagship species sponsorship programmes. We find that private funding for flagship species can clearly result in additional species and phylogenetic diversity conserved, via conservation actions shared with other species. When private flagship species funding is incorporated into a prioritization protocol to preferentially sponsor shared actions, expected gains can be more than doubled. However, these gains are consistently smaller than expected gains in a hypothetical scenario where private funding could be optimally allocated among all threatened species. We recommend integrating private sponsorship of flagship species into objective prioritization protocols to sponsor efficient actions that maximize biodiversity gains, or wherever possible, encouraging private donations for broader biodiversity goals.

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“…Thus, our focus is on factors, especially conservation status, that may influence research effort, a contrast to previous studies (e.g. Restani & Marzluff 2002, Male & Bean 2005 which have investigated how conservation funds are distributed among threatened species.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is research effort associated with the conservation status of European bird species?

Murray¹,

Green²,

Williams³

et al. 2015

Endang. Species. Res.

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Research effort is critical to the success of interventions which aim to reduce declines in biodiversity and so can be considered as a conservation resource. European bird species are among the best studied and most popular groups of animals, yet 1 in 10 are currently globally threatened or near threatened, and many have been prioritised by various multilateral environmental agreements. To investigate how research effort is directed towards European bird species, and in particular whether conservation listing prompts additional research, the number of outputs from a Web of Science search related to conservation was used to develop an index of research effort for each species. This index was then analysed against a set of population, morphological, ecological and socioeconomic parameters collated from the literature, plus measures of threat level. A series of generalised linear models revealed that the most important factors in explaining the distribution of research effort amongst European bird species included 'European population size', 'potential research investment' and 'habitat type', which were linked to ease of study. Also important were the species' generation length, 1990−2000 European population trend and migration status. Research effort was not well targeted with respect to either European or global threat status, and there was little support for the suggestion that inclusion of species in legislative instruments such as Annex I of the EU Birds Directive might stimulate research. Research effort must become better prioritised to achieve the greatest net conservation benefit.

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Funding Extinction? Biological Needs and Political Realities in the Allocation of Resources to Endangered Species Recovery

Cited by 90 publications

References 21 publications

Reducing threats to species: threat reversibility and links to industry

Reducing threats to species: threat reversibility and links to industry

Biodiversity gains from efficient use of private sponsorship for flagship species conservation

Is research effort associated with the conservation status of European bird species?

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