Reacción a "Conservation efforts focus on a few popular species"

This article is important because it quantifies a well-known problem: biases in nature conservation. Instead of investing money in the species most at risk of extinction, the vast majority is invested in the ‘heroic megafauna’, the species most charismatic to humans, such as other primates, elephants and species that resemble our pets (tigers, lions, or wolves, for example).

By quantifying the extent to which we have neglected the groups of organisms most threatened with extinction, this work could help change the strategies of management and conservation agencies. With this evidence, it could encourage the diversion of some of the available money to where it can have the greatest effect. For example, the most threatened group of vertebrates is amphibians (with a quarter of all threatened vertebrate species), but they receive barely 2% of funding. Similarly, among invertebrates, dragonflies are particularly threatened, but the little money spent on insect conservation programmes is mainly spent on bees or butterflies.

With such a misallocation of money, the worst news in this article may be that only 6% of globally threatened species have had any conservation projects. In the end, the inequality in the distribution of funds among threatened wildlife and plants somewhat resembles economic inequality in human society.