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Larger, charismatic animals receive the lion’s share of conservation funding, even though some are not threatened, a 25-year study has found.
The study drew on data from 14,566 conservation projects with a combined fund of USD $1.963 billion. An analysis showed that 82.9 percent of the funding and 84 percent of the projects were focused on vertebrates. This is 10 to 40 percent more than reported in previous studies. Among vertebrates, birds and mammals receive 85 percent of funding, while amphibians receive just 2.8 percent.
Large mammals such as elephants and rhinos are even more overrepresented in conservation projects. Though they account for only a third of threatened mammals, 86 percent of funding is dedicated to them. Meanwhile, funding for other mammals that are classed as endangered such as rodents, bats, and hedgehogs is limited. Overall, funding supports around six percent of species classified as threatened, and 29 percent of the funding was used for species of “least concern.”
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“Both governments and nongovernmental stakeholders urgently need new approaches to help tackle the biodiversity crisis,” the researchers write. This includes “realigning funding priorities to ensure representative funding across taxa toward vulnerable and currently neglected species.”
Small species and plants neglected
Plants and invertebrates receive hardly any conservation attention, the research found. Each accounts for only 6.6 percent ($129 million) of funding and 7.8 percent and 5.7 percent of conservation projects, respectively. This is despite 45 percent of flowering plant species being threatened with extinction, and invertebrates accounting for around 97 percent of all animals on the planet. Fungi and algae are even more neglected, accounting for less than 0.2 percent of funding each.
Part of the problem is that a relatively small number of these species have assessed for their conservation status. While 80 percent of vertebrates have been assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), only 18 percent of plants, 1.8 percent of invertebrates, and 0.4 percent of fungi have been. Many of these species remain undocumented by science.
A further problem, according to the new research, is that the majority of conservation projects target single species instead of multiple species. This means habitats and ecosystems that support many “less conspicuous species” don’t get as much support.
“Future allocation of funding needs to address these biases by distributing resources to a wider range of vulnerable species,” the researchers write.
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