Abstract for presentation at Biodiversity Extinction Crisis Conference - A Pacific Response

Global biodiversity is declining at unprecedented rates and, tragically, the funding available for its conservation is grossly inadequate. Government and independent bodies faced with the task of conserving threatened species desperately need simple strategies to effectively manage with their limited resources. The cost-effective management of threatened species is usually limited by the lack of a systematic framework for prioritising actions. The academic literature dedicated to systematic priority setting usually recommends ranking species on level of endangerment, evolutionary distinctiveness, ecological importance or social significance. These approaches make the unrealistic assumptions that all management actions cost the same and have equal likelihood of succeeding. These assumptions will result in the misallocation of scarce conservation resources and, potentially, unnecessary losses. Here, we present a formal and systematic framework to optimise resource allocation among New Zealand threatened species where cost of management, the technical capacity to manage, and potential for species’ recovery are considered simultaneously. We provide examples of the elicitation of expert opinion to set objectives and to estimate the framework parameters including management costs, benefits and likelihood of success. We demonstrate assessing species on biological or social values alone is only one step in the prioritisation process and considering these factors in isolation may result in unnecessary extinctions. We show that efficiency in spending is substantially improved through incorporating management costs, benefits and likelihood of management success and, hence, the number of species managed and the expected overall benefit to threatened species is increased remarkably.