Do you save 1 Kiwi species instead of 1 fish, 1 invertebrate, 3 plants and another bird species?
Possingham remains an unrepentant economic realist: “Conservation funds are grossly inadequate to address the plight of threatened species” and governments and conservation organisations need “simple strategies for allocating limited resources”, he writes in an ambitious paper in which he dissects the entire national conservation program for threatened-species projects in New Zealand (‘Optimal allocation of resources among threatened species: a Project Prioritization Protocol’, Conservation Biology, 2008, vol 23, 328-38). 32 species projects were assessed for relative costs and benefits (including species values based on taxonomic distinctness and whether it holds a key role in the ecosystem) and the likelihood of management success (as assessed by 105 ‘experts’). His stark conclusions are unlikely to please groups like AZE: 1. Ranking species by taxonomic distinctiveness always resulted in the fewest species managed. 2. Prioritizing projects on the basis of threat status or taxonomic
