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Published on: March 13, 2011
Cost-effective priorities for global mammal conservation.
Josie Carwardine1, Kerrie A Wilson, Gerardo Ceballos
1The Ecology Centre, University of Queensland, QLD 4072, Australia. j.carwardine@uq.edu.au
Summary
This study introduces a new framework for global mammal conservation priorities. It reduces conflicts with agriculture by 50% while achieving similar biodiversity outcomes, highlighting funding allocation challenges.
Area of Science:
- Conservation Science
- Biodiversity
- Ecology
Background:
- Global biodiversity priority setting is crucial for allocating conservation funds strategically.
- Previous approaches, like Ceballos et al. (2005), identified mammal conservation priorities but often conflicted with agricultural activities due to a lack of socioeconomic objectives.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present a novel priority-setting framework for mammal conservation that minimizes conflicts and opportunity costs.
- To derive a new set of priority areas for investment in mammal conservation by integrating biodiversity importance, agricultural opportunity cost, funding levels, and threat degree.
Main Methods:
- Developed a framework incorporating agricultural opportunity cost and biodiversity importance.
- Integrated current international funding levels and the degree of threat into the priority-setting process.
- Derived a new set of priority areas for mammal conservation investment.
Main Results:
- The new framework achieved the same biodiversity outcomes as previous methods.
- Reduced opportunity costs and conflicts with agricultural human activity by up to 50%.
- Identified significant shortfalls in conservation fund allocation across many threatened priority areas.
Conclusions:
- The developed framework offers a more integrated approach to conservation priority setting.
- This method effectively reduces socioeconomic conflicts and financial opportunity costs in conservation.
- There is a critical need to address the misallocation of global conservation funds to effectively protect threatened mammal populations.
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