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Conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum

Conservation strategies based on charismatic flagship species, such as tigers, lions, and elephants, successfully attract funding from individuals and corporate donors. However, critics of this species-focused approach argue it wastes resources and often does not benefit broader biodiversity. If tru...

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Autores principales: McGowan, Jennifer, Beaumont, Linda J., Smith, Robert J., Chauvenet, Alienor L. M., Harcourt, Robert, Atkinson, Scott C., Mittermeier, John C., Esperon-Rodriguez, Manuel, Baumgartner, John B., Beattie, Andrew, Dudaniec, Rachael Y., Grenyer, Richard, Nipperess, David A., Stow, Adam, Possingham, Hugh P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7040008/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32094329
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14554-z
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author McGowan, Jennifer
Beaumont, Linda J.
Smith, Robert J.
Chauvenet, Alienor L. M.
Harcourt, Robert
Atkinson, Scott C.
Mittermeier, John C.
Esperon-Rodriguez, Manuel
Baumgartner, John B.
Beattie, Andrew
Dudaniec, Rachael Y.
Grenyer, Richard
Nipperess, David A.
Stow, Adam
Possingham, Hugh P.
author_facet McGowan, Jennifer
Beaumont, Linda J.
Smith, Robert J.
Chauvenet, Alienor L. M.
Harcourt, Robert
Atkinson, Scott C.
Mittermeier, John C.
Esperon-Rodriguez, Manuel
Baumgartner, John B.
Beattie, Andrew
Dudaniec, Rachael Y.
Grenyer, Richard
Nipperess, David A.
Stow, Adam
Possingham, Hugh P.
author_sort McGowan, Jennifer
collection PubMed
description Conservation strategies based on charismatic flagship species, such as tigers, lions, and elephants, successfully attract funding from individuals and corporate donors. However, critics of this species-focused approach argue it wastes resources and often does not benefit broader biodiversity. If true, then the best way of raising conservation funds excludes the best way of spending it. Here we show that this conundrum can be resolved, and that the flagship species approach does not impede cost-effective conservation. Through a tailored prioritization approach, we identify places containing flagship species while also maximizing global biodiversity representation (based on 19,616 terrestrial and freshwater species). We then compare these results to scenarios that only maximized biodiversity representation, and demonstrate that our flagship-based approach achieves 79−89% of our objective. This provides strong evidence that prudently selected flagships can both raise funds for conservation and help target where these resources are best spent to conserve biodiversity.
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spelling pubmed-70400082020-03-04 Conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum McGowan, Jennifer Beaumont, Linda J. Smith, Robert J. Chauvenet, Alienor L. M. Harcourt, Robert Atkinson, Scott C. Mittermeier, John C. Esperon-Rodriguez, Manuel Baumgartner, John B. Beattie, Andrew Dudaniec, Rachael Y. Grenyer, Richard Nipperess, David A. Stow, Adam Possingham, Hugh P. Nat Commun Article Conservation strategies based on charismatic flagship species, such as tigers, lions, and elephants, successfully attract funding from individuals and corporate donors. However, critics of this species-focused approach argue it wastes resources and often does not benefit broader biodiversity. If true, then the best way of raising conservation funds excludes the best way of spending it. Here we show that this conundrum can be resolved, and that the flagship species approach does not impede cost-effective conservation. Through a tailored prioritization approach, we identify places containing flagship species while also maximizing global biodiversity representation (based on 19,616 terrestrial and freshwater species). We then compare these results to scenarios that only maximized biodiversity representation, and demonstrate that our flagship-based approach achieves 79−89% of our objective. This provides strong evidence that prudently selected flagships can both raise funds for conservation and help target where these resources are best spent to conserve biodiversity. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-02-24 /pmc/articles/PMC7040008/ /pubmed/32094329 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14554-z Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
McGowan, Jennifer
Beaumont, Linda J.
Smith, Robert J.
Chauvenet, Alienor L. M.
Harcourt, Robert
Atkinson, Scott C.
Mittermeier, John C.
Esperon-Rodriguez, Manuel
Baumgartner, John B.
Beattie, Andrew
Dudaniec, Rachael Y.
Grenyer, Richard
Nipperess, David A.
Stow, Adam
Possingham, Hugh P.
Conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum
title Conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum
title_full Conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum
title_fullStr Conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum
title_full_unstemmed Conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum
title_short Conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum
title_sort conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7040008/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32094329
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14554-z
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