Conservation policy and decision-making meets conservation science and economics: The case of marine reserve systems
The world is having a love affair with marine reserves. Many countries, including Australia, are in the midst of planning major expansions to their marine reserve systems. The recent rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is a recent and successful example of the application of good ecology and wise decision-making. However there are significant impediments to the application of systematic conservation planning principles to future marine reserve systems in Australia and elsewhere. The failure to adopt planning approaches embedded in economic and scientific principles is not restricted to problems of marine spatial prioritization. The big question is: how many species will unstructured decision-making cost us? These issues will be discussed in the context of particular situations.