How public values for threatened species are affected by conservation strategies

Zander, Kerstin K.; Burton, Michael; Pandit, Ram; Gunawardena, Asha; Pannell, David J.; Garnett, Stephen T.

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.115659

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Intimation that society supports some attempt to prioritize biodiversity assets in disaster management comes from social surveys that show that communities are prepared to accept fire management practices that provide for explicit protection of biodiversity, even if such practices lead to reduced effort allocated to protecting human life or infrastructure (Moskwa et al, 2016(Moskwa et al, , 2018. Furthermore, surveys of the Australian public show that a large majority of people believe society should attempt to prevent extinction regardless of the cost (Zander et al, 2021(Zander et al, , 2022, indicating that in an emergency setting, protecting a species that would otherwise become extinct should be accorded a high priority.…”

Section: Single Human Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Social valuation of biodiversity relative to other types of assets at risk in wildfire

Woinarski,

Garnett,

Zander

2024

Conservation Biology

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Environmental crises, such as wildfires, can cause major losses of human life, infrastructure, biodiversity and cultural values. In many such situations, incident controllers must make fateful choices about what to protect – and hence what to abandon. Conventionally, human life is prioritized ahead of property, with biodiversity last. With increasing incidence and severity of environmental crises, such prioritization will lead to a recurring pattern of acute biodiversity losses, including extinctions. We investigated Australian social attitudes to this dilemma, to consider whether existing policies and protocols for asset prioritization reflect community values. We used best‐worst scaling to assess preferences across a set of 11 assets representing human life, infrastructure, biodiversity and cultural values. Survey respondents overwhelmingly prioritized protection of a single human life, even if that choice resulted in extinction of other species. Inanimate (replaceable) objects were accorded lowest priority. Amongst biodiversity assets, most respondents ranked protecting a population of the iconic koala ahead of preventing the extinction of a snail and a plant species. Women showed more preference than men for protecting koalas, wallabies and sheep, and less preference for protecting a house, shed, shrub and rock carving; Indigenous people showed more preference for Indigenous cultural assets. These results variably support current policy, in that they emphasize the importance the community places on protection of human life, but results diverge from conventional practice in rating some biodiversity assets ahead of infrastructure. The preference for protecting a population of koalas ahead of action taken to prevent the extinction of an invertebrate and plant species corroborates previous research reporting biases in the way people value nature. If non‐charismatic species are not to be treated as expendable, then the case for preventing their extinction needs to be better made to the community. Given the increasing global incidence of high severity wildfires, further sampling of societal preferences amongst diverse asset types is warranted, with results from such sampling then informing planning, policy and practice relating to wildfire and other catastrophic events. Other pre‐emptive targeted management actions (such as translocations) will be needed to conserve biodiversity likely to be imperilled by wildfires, and especially so for non‐iconic species.ARTICLE IMPACT STATEMENT: Regarding protection from wildfire, respondents prioritized protection of 1 human life even if the choice lead to extinction of a species.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

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Section: Single Human Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

Social valuation of biodiversity relative to other types of assets at risk in wildfire

Woinarski,

Garnett,

Zander

2024

Conservation Biology

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“…Nonetheless, monetary value can be ascribed to environmental services (Liu et al 2010). Furthermore, social surveys have provided estimates for what the community is willing to pay to conserve biodiversity (Zander et al 2022), and those values could be weighed against the cost of repairing or reconstructing infrastructure. Similarly, biodiversity 'crediting' processes associated with offsets suggest that biodiversity can be assigned a value that is legally defined and tradable (e.g.…”

Section: Valuing Biodiversity Relative To Other Assetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making choices: prioritising the protection of biodiversity in wildfires

McCormack

McDonald

Legge

et al. 2023

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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Biodiversity is in chronic decline, and extreme events -such as wildfires -can add further episodes of acute losses. Fires of increasing magnitude will often overwhelm response capacity, and decision-makers need to make choices about what to protect. Conventionally, such choices prioritise human life then infrastructure then biodiversity. Based on shortcomings revealed in the 2019-20 Australian wildfires, we propose a series of linked steps that can be used to identify and prioritise biodiversity assets (including their priority relative to other types of assets), enhance and implement their protection through planning and practice, and strengthen legislation to safeguard them.

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“…While the public may be willing to pay more for the conservation of some species than they are for others (Pandit et al 2022), they do not want any form actually to go extinct (Zander et al 2021). Similarly, while scientists and some advocacy groups may be concerned about the ethics or efficacy of particular approaches (Subroy et al 2018), the public is not troubled by such matters provided they are effective, whether it be killing feral animals (Zander et al 2021) or intensive genetic management (Zander et al 2022).…”

Section: Important Versus Not-so-important Aspectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Australian public worries more about losing species than the costs of keeping them

et al. 2023

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Summary Government conservation measures will always depend on public support. While more has been learnt about which species the public values and which conservation measures are socially acceptable, less is known about the criteria that the public thinks government should consider when making conservation investment decisions. This study uses a stated preference best–worst scaling method to gauge the views of a sample of the Australian public on what they think government should consider when allocating funding to threatened species conservation. We found that the three most important factors were the risk that a species might become extinct, the likelihood that a conservation intervention might be effective and the risk of unintended consequences for other species that could potentially arise if the measure was implemented. Costs of conservation measures and the degree to which the society accepts these costs were considered much less important. The latter aspect was consistent with the high level of trust that respondents placed in the judgement of experts and scientists concerning threatened species conservation. We conclude that the Australian Government has a societal mandate to spend more money on threatened species conservation, provided that there is little risk and that it is backed up by science.

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How public values for threatened species are affected by conservation strategies

Cited by 9 publications

References 64 publications

Social valuation of biodiversity relative to other types of assets at risk in wildfire

Social valuation of biodiversity relative to other types of assets at risk in wildfire

Making choices: prioritising the protection of biodiversity in wildfires

The Australian public worries more about losing species than the costs of keeping them

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