IS IT time to let some threatened species go extinct? The heretical notion is worthy of consideration, says a majority of conservationists contacted in a poll.
Of 583 questioned, 60 per cent agreed that criteria should be established for deciding which species to abandon in order to focus on saving others (Conservation Biology, DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2011.01772.x). Murray Rudd of the University of York, UK, who ran the survey, says the subject has been somewhat taboo until recently. Most large conservation organisations, he adds, already have checklists for prioritising their efforts.
We will inevitably lose species, says Jean-Christophe Vi? of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Geneva, Switzerland. "But there will be disagreement about priorities. We can't save all 17,000 species under threat, so we must choose, and that depends on many parameters."
Making that choice will not be straightforward. As Rudd puts it: "Should it be how unique a species is genetically, how useful it is economically, or whether lots of species can be saved at once?"
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