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

The biodiversity crisis that the planet is suffering as a result of human action is giving rise to a mass extinction of dimensions comparable to other crises suffered throughout the Earth's geological history, caused by global catastrophes such as major climate change, widespread volcanism or the impact of meteorites. The current loss of species, habitats and genetic variability, which is affecting all living things across the board, requires a commitment from those responsible for this catastrophe, from ourselves, to at least halt this biodiversity-laminating trend. Human-induced transformations have an impact on all types of organisms, in all environments, without too many distinctions. However, the efforts made to halt these losses, unlike the causes, do have a marked bias imposed by various interests, by subjective preferences independent of the true taxonomic importance or the degree of threat to the species, as shown in this work.

A coherent biodiversity conservation model should distribute funding, which is always very limited, according to rigorous scientific criteria, usually to the most threatened species. Guenard et al. rightly point out that the criteria used to implement funded conservation projects have more to do with human interest in species, their more or less charismatic or emblematic character, than with their true status. This discrepancy, according to the authors of the article, does not even generate positive collateral effects, since the species that are appreciated by public opinion are not representative of the abundance of other species, as has been demonstrated in other studies, and their eventual improvement would not be transferred to other, more threatened species.

The planetary biodiversity that suffers most from our excesses is not exactly the target of funds for its recovery. Molluscs, amphibians, fungi and inland fish are the ones that are really suffering from human impact and hardly any financial effort is devoted to them to prevent their extinction. As the authors of the article point out, it is necessary to increase scientific knowledge of a large part of living beings, precisely define their status and, from there, act coherently. Otherwise, we will not be guaranteeing the conservation of biodiversity as a whole, but only of a small fraction of beings perhaps more suited to zoos than to other areas.