Cross-border conservation efforts can yield better results than going it alone.

After extensive research, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in Australia have found out that Cross-border conservation efforts can yield better results than going it alone by individual states.

The researchers zoomed in on the terrestrial Mediterranean basin for their study due to its complexity. It holds over 25 countries with 250 million people and it is an important global biodiversity hotspot with many endemic and rare species. Currently, conservation efforts are largely uncoordinated across the whole region. The study found that there could be a saving of 45 % in costs of conservation if efforts of endemic vertebrates’ research were coordinated across Mediterranean ecosystem. This works out to $67-billion in savings.

Countries across the globe can take leaf out of this path breaking research.

The details of the study appear in “The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA”.

04/01/2010 09:00:06