Deciding what to save
When a house is on fire, most people find the initial decisions about what to save quite easy. Humans (and by tradition women and children) first, then pets (dogs before goldfish), then photos. But after that it gets a bit tricky. The antique armoire or the new computer? Expensive or sentimental items?
Conservationists face a similar problem deciding where to set up protected areas. One might think it would make sense to create them where they could save the maximum number of species. After all, about 50% of plant species and 71% of vertebrate species are concentrated in “hotspots” that cover only 2.3% of the Earth’s surface.
Unfortunately, such a straightforward idea is complicated by some ecological and technical issues. After protecting a region’s most diverse area, choosing to protect the next highest-diversity area in the same region would risk having similar, common species over-represented at the expense of rare species endemic to different places—much like saving pictures from the burning house by grabbing three large piles risks allowing scattered treasures to burn. There must be a way to ensure that rare and endemic species are included in a conservation network.
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