Long-term preventive conservation is preferable to short term firefighting

When should we save the most endangered species?

Howard B. Wilson,Liana N Joseph,Alana L. Moore and Hugh P. Possingham

Article first published online: 12 JUL 2011

Ecology Letters (2011)

In this paper the authors emphasizes that long-term preventive conservation measures are far better than short term firefighting

Conservationists have always been bothered whether to give priority to cost-effective actions or whether focusing solely on the most endangered species will ultimately lead to preservation of the greatest number of species. Conservation funding tends to be short-term in nature and on the whole biased to more endangered species.

By framing this debate within a decision-analytic framework, the researchers show that allocating resources solely to the most endangered species will typically not minimise the number of extinctions in the long-term, as this does not account for the risk of less endangered species going extinct in the future.

Short term fire fighting can be resorted to when our planning timeframe is short or we have a long-term view and we are optimistic about future conditions.

On the whole this paper is very thought provoking.