title: Biodiversity gains from efficient use of private sponsorship for flagship species conservation.
abstract: To address the global extinction crisis, both efficient use of existing conservation funding and new sources of funding are vital. Private sponsorship of charismatic 'flagship' species conservation represents an important source of new funding, but has been criticized as being inefficient. However, the ancillary benefits of privately sponsored flagship species conservation via actions benefiting other species have not been quantified, nor have the benefits of incorporating such sponsorship into objective prioritization protocols. Here, we use a comprehensive dataset of conservation actions for the 700 most threatened species in New Zealand to examine the potential biodiversity gains from national private flagship species sponsorship programmes. We find that private funding for flagship species can clearly result in additional species and phylogenetic diversity conserved, via conservation actions shared with other species. When private flagship species funding is incorporated into a prioritization protocol to preferentially sponsor shared actions, expected gains can be more than doubled. However, these gains are consistently smaller than expected gains in a hypothetical scenario where private funding could be optimally allocated among all threatened species. We recommend integrating private sponsorship of flagship species into objective prioritization protocols to sponsor efficient actions that maximize biodiversity gains, or wherever possible, encouraging private donations for broader biodiversity goals.
authors: Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia j.bennett5@uq.edu.au.
authors: Joseph R
authors: JR
authors: Bennett
authors: Department of Conservation, Christchurch Mail Centre, Private Bag 4715, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand.
authors: Richard
authors: R
authors: Maloney
authors: Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia School of Life Sciences, Silwood Park Imperial College London, Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7QN, UK.
authors: Hugh P
authors: HP
authors: Possingham
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D056727:Endangered Species; D017149:Private Sector
keywords: biodiversity conservation; flagship fleet; flagship species; prioritization protocol; private sponsorship; threatened species