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Conservation priorities: What to let go

Nature volume 450, pages 152–155 (2007)Cite this article

Not all species can be saved from extinction. Emma Marris talks to conservation biologists about prioritization and triage.

Richard Cowling was playing with maps of South Africa on a computer screen when he had his epiphany. He was designing a conservation plan for the Cape Floristic Region, or fynbos, an arid landscape of shrubs and flowers that contains some 9,000 species, many unique to the area. Some of these, such as the mandala-like sunset blooms of the protea flowers, are spectacular. Some ? like the geometric tortoises, whose fetching shells help them hide from baboons and secretary birds ? are seriously endangered. Cowling, a conservation biologist at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, was working on defining a set of reserves that would maximize the chances of conserving all those species. The project was so large that it would end up as a series of 16 papers by 36 authors that occupied all 297 pages of Biological Conservation's July?August 2003 issue. And it was also, Cowling realized as he stared at the screen, ?sheer nonsense?.

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Authors
  1. Emma Marris
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Emma Marris writes for Nature from Columbia, Missouri.

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Marris, E. Conservation priorities: What to let go. Nature 450, 152–155 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/450152a

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