Is conservation triage just smart decision making?
Conservation efforts and emergency medicine face comparable problems: how to use scarce resources wisely to conserve valuable assets. In both fields, the process of prioritising actions is known as triage. Although often used implicitly by conservation managers, scientists and policymakers, triage has been misinterpreted as the process of simply deciding which assets (e.g. species, habitats) will not receive investment. As a consequence, triage is sometimes associated with a defeatist conservation ethic. However, triage is no more than the efficient allocation of conservation resources and we risk wasting scarce resources if we do not follow its basic principles.
The University of Queensland, The Applied Environmental Decision Analysis Centre, The Ecology Centre, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia. m.bottrill@uq.edu.au
Madeleine C
MC
Bottrill
Liana N
LN
Joseph
Josie
J
Carwardine
Michael
M
Bode
Carly
C
Cook
Edward T
ET
Game
Hedley
H
Grantham
Salit
S
Kark
Simon
S
Linke
Eve
E
McDonald-Madden
Robert L
RL
Pressey
Susan
S
Walker
Kerrie A
KA
Wilson
Hugh P
HP
Possingham
D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics; D003657:Decision Making; D012945:Social Values