The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia Wildlife Conservation Society, 2300 Southern Boulevard, The Bronx, NY 10460, USA.
Ecol Lett. 2011 Sep;14(9):886-90. doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01652.x. Epub 2011 Jul 12.
At the heart of our efforts to protect threatened species, there is a controversial debate about 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. By framing this debate within a decision-analytic framework, we 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. It is only favoured when our planning timeframe is short or we have a long-term view and we are optimistic about future conditions. Conservation funding tends to be short-term in nature, which biases allocations to more endangered species. Our work highlights the need to consider resource allocation for biodiversity over the long-term; 'preventive conservation', rather than just short-term fire-fighting.
在保护濒危物种的努力中，核心存在一场争议性辩论，即应优先考虑具有成本效益的行动，还是仅专注于保护最濒危的物种最终将导致保护最多数量的物种。通过在决策分析框架内构建这场辩论，我们表明，仅将资源分配给最濒危的物种通常不会使长期内的物种灭绝数量最小化，因为这并没有考虑到未来较不濒危物种灭绝的风险。只有当我们的规划时间框架较短或我们具有长期观点并且对未来条件持乐观态度时，这种做法才会受到青睐。保护资金往往具有短期性质，这会导致对更濒危物种的分配产生偏见。我们的工作强调了需要长期考虑生物多样性的资源分配；“预防性保护”，而不仅仅是短期的灭火。
