Keynote Speaker: Dr. Leah Gerber
More species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction now than any other time in human history. Limited resources produce a repeating conundrum for agencies responsible for biodiversity conservation: should limited funding be used primarily to prevent imminent extinction, or should funds be allocated to maximize species recovery over the long term? A contentious discussion of values has stemmed from this question: some argue that the latter strategy is ethically unsound, because it may abandon species with little hope of long-term recovery, while others note that the former strategy may myopically miss opportunities to prevent species from ever experiencing the risk of imminent extinction. A structured, logical, and transparent approach to allocating limited resources among recovery programs to evaluate the relative achievements of the multiple objectives of recovery funding is urgently needed. As part of a recent working group supported by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, we worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a tool to compare different funding allocation strategies for recovery actions. The Recovery Explorer tool can be used to evaluate potential consequences of alternative resource allocation strategies. Structured decision making facilitates discussion about alternative resources allocation strategies. Structured decision making facilities discussion about alternative approaches to resource allocation by making the important component of the decision process transparent. This approach allows funding agencies and conservation partners to evaluate the effects of increasing or decreasing investment in species recovery.