Getting the most conservation bang for your buck...

Margay cat (Leopardus wiedii). Image credit, Marlene ThyssIn a world with a large number of species facing imminent risk of extinction and limited amount of resources to act, it is important to set priorities for conservation spending. A new study by a team of scientists from Brazil tests a method for prioritizing the conservation of carnivores on a global scale. What's most interesting about their approach is that they take into consideration both species vulnerability as well as economic costs to try to come up with a scenario that gets the best conservation return on investment.

The researchers focused their analyses on 236 carnivore species (occurring in 661 ecoregions). From a biological perspective, they considered indicators for vulnerability such as population density, body size and litter sizes. They combined this information with the cost of acquiring land and produced several alternative scenarios. They found that cost-effective conservation efforts should focus on 41-ecoregions in order to include species most vulnerable to extinction while minimizing mean land cost.

There's a big assumption in this study - that land acquisition is an equally successful conservation strategy throughout the world. However, past experience has shown that land acquisition and protected area designation may not always be effective strategies for conserving species in areas with high levels of poverty, indigenous land management systems, weak governance, etc. A more robust analysis would include these additional socioeconomic factors. Nonetheless this study is an important step in taking cost-effectiveness into greater consideration when deciding how to allocate resources to the work of conserving species.

This study was published in the open source journal PLoS ONE, which you means you can read the full study for free if click on the title below:

Source:	PLoS ONE
Title:	Integrating Economic Costs and Biological Traits into Global Conservation Priorities for Carnivores
Authors:	Rafael Dias Loyola, Luiz Gustavo Rodrigues Oliveira-Santos, Mário Almeida-Neto, Denise Martins Nogueira, Umberto Kubota, José Alexandre Felizola Diniz-Filho, Thomas Michael Lewinsohn

Comments

[Joanne L]

Clear and concise summary of a complicated research study.