Emergency situations often entail agonizing choices over what to save when time and resources are limited. Writing in Conservation Biology, Woinarski et al. suggest that some assumptions about societal priorities during responses to natural disasters may need revisiting. The authors surveyed 2,139 adult Australians who were randomly selected to reflect the country’s population. Respondents were asked to consider 11 assets and rank them using a best–worst scaling design, according to which they wanted to be saved by fire managers during a hypothetical severe wildfire. The assets included: a single human life, a house with no people in it, a farm shed, farm animals, a population of koalas (an iconic species) that would not change the overall status of koalas in Australia, the last population of a native snail or a native shrub, and an ancient Aboriginal rock art site. As the authors expected, human life was overwhelmingly prioritized even if this choice meant the extinction of the snail or shrub species. Given the escalating rate of natural disasters, such low prioritization for uncharismatic species will probably lead to increasing extinctions. But respondents valued biodiversity assets higher than replaceable property, which is counter to most current protocols and suggests that these need review. Woinarski et al. suggest that similar and expanded consultation should be conducted to allow policy development that facilitates rapid decision-making that reflects community expectations. They also recognized a need to raise awareness of the conservation values and needs of ‘unloved’ species.
Original reference: Conserv. Biol., https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14230 (2023)
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