Scientists Create a "Worth Saving" Index For Endangered Animals

If you're one of the last hairy-nosed-wombats left in Australia things got a little worse for you today. Thanks to a new mathematical tool created by researchers from James Cook University and the University of Adelaide, the wombat has been classified as not worth saving. Co-author of the safe index Professor Corey Bradshaw says he doesn't think people should give up on saving extremely endangered animals but adds, "...if you take a strictly empirical view, things that are well below in numbering in the hundreds - white-footed rock rats, certain types of hare wallabies, a lot of the smaller mammals that have been really nailed by the feral predators like cats, and foxes - in some cases it is probably not worthwhile putting a lot of effort because there's just no chance."

Comments

Re:Well, you can't save 'em all

[NeutronCowboy]

True. The problem is that his metric is wrong. The easiest way to deal with a pesky endangered animal that is blocking your development has now become to actually kill it even more. Once it goes below the specified threshold, it's put on the not-worth-saving list, and you can merrily go on developing.

The proper metric is how important a particular species is to its local environment. Think keystone species like Krill, wolves, Killer Whales or Tuna. The problem is that this is difficult - how do you measure importance? How do you know you measured something right, or at all? The response to this is that of caution: if we don't know which ones to save, we'll try to save as many as we can, and hope we pick right.