It is a truism that when times are tough, only the strongest pull through. This isn’t a happy concept, but in our age of burgeoning biodiversity loss (and economic belt-tightening), we have to make some difficult decisions.In this regard, I suggest Brian Walker’s1992 paper Biodiveristy and ecological redundancy makes the Classics list.
Ecological triage is, of course, taken from the medical term triage used in emergency or wartime situations. Ecological triage refers to the the conservation prioritisation of species that provide unique or necessary functions to ecosystems, and the abandonment of those that do not have unique ecosystem roles or that face almost certain extinction given they fall well below their minimum viable population size (Walker 1992). Financial resources such as investment in recovery programmes, purchase of remaining habitats for preservation, habitat restoration, etc. are allocated accordingly; the species that contribute the most to ecosystem function and have the highest probability of persisting are earmarked for conservation and others are left to their own devices (Hobbs & Kristjanson 2003).
This emotionally empty and accounting-type conservation can be controversial because public favourites like pandas, kakapo and some dolphin species just don’t make the list in many circumstances. As I’ve stated before, it makes no long-term conservation or economic sense to waste money on the doomed and ecologically redundant. Many in the conservation business apply ecological triage without being fully aware of it. Finite pools of money (generally the paltry left-overs from some green-guilty corporation or under-funded government initiative) for conservation mean that we have to set priorities – this is an entire discipline in its own right in conservation biology. Reserve design is just one example of this sacrifice-the-doomed-for-the good-of-the-ecosystem approach.
Walker (1992) advocated that we should endeavour to maintain ecosystem function first, and recommended that we abandon programmes to restore functionally ‘redundant’ species (i.e., some species are more ecologically important than others, e.g., pollinators, prey). But how do you make the choice? The wrong selection might mean an extinction cascade (Noss 1990; Walker 1992) whereby tightly linked species (e.g., parasites-hosts, pollinators-plants, predators-prey) will necessarily go extinct if one partner in the mutualism disappears (see Koh et al. 2004 on co-extinctions). Ecological redundancy is a terribly difficult thing to determine, especially given that we still understand relatively little about how complex ecological systems really work (Marris 2007).
The more common (and easier, if not theoretically weaker) approach is to prioritise areas and not species (e.g., biodiversity hotspots), but even the criteria used for area prioritisation can be somewhat arbitrary and may not necessarily guarantee the most important functional groups are maintained (Orme et al. 2005; Brooks et al. 2006). There are many different ways of establishing ‘priority’, and it depends partially on your predilections.
More recent mathematical approaches such as cost-benefit analyses (Possingham et al. 2002; Murdoch et al. 2007) advocate conservation like a CEO would run a profitable business. In this case the ‘currency’ is biodiversity, and so a fixed financial investment must maximise long-term biodiversity gains (Possingham et al. 2002). This essentially estimates the potential biodiversity saved per dollar invested, and allocates funds accordingly (Wilson et al. 2007). Where the costs outweigh the benefits, conservationists move on to more beneficial goals. Perhaps the biggest drawback with this approach is that it’s particularly data-hungry. When ecosystems are poorly measured, then the investment curve is unlikely to be very realistic.
(Many thanks to Lochran Traill and Barry Brook for co-developing these ideas with me)
ConservationBytes.com 
[…] false expectations, engender disillusionment after inevitable failure, and ignores the concept of triage — putting our environment-restoration resources toward the species/systems with the best chance […]
LikeLike
[…] “Ecological triage refers to the the conservation prioritisation of species that provide unique or necessary functions to ecosystems, and the abandonment of those that do not have unique ecosystem roles or that face almost certain extinction . . . Financial resources such as investment in recovery programmes, purchase of remaining habitats for preservation, habitat restoration, etc. are allocated accordingly; the species that contribute the most to ecosystem function and have the highest probability of persisting are earmarked for conservation and others are left to their own devices (Hobbs & Kristjanson 2003).” –Ecological Triage […]
LikeLike
[…] C.J.A. 2009. Classics: Ecological Triage. Conservation Bytes […]
LikeLike
Reblogged this on for Biodiversity's sake!.
LikeLike
[…] I can’t say I really buy the argument that we shouldn’t say these sorts of things because some species will never get to those sizes. Get used to it – extinctions are happening and we’ll have to get clever about where we best spend our conservation dollars. […]
LikeLike
[…] https://conservationbytes.com/2009/03/27/classics-ecological-triage/ […]
LikeLike
[…] “Ecological triage refers to the the conservation prioritisation of species that provide unique or necessary functions to ecosystems, and the abandonment of those that do not have unique ecosystem roles or that face almost certain extinction . . . Financial resources such as investment in recovery programmes, purchase of remaining habitats for preservation, habitat restoration, etc. are allocated accordingly; the species that contribute the most to ecosystem function and have the highest probability of persisting are earmarked for conservation and others are left to their own devices (Hobbs & Kristjanson 2003).” -Ecological Triage […]
LikeLike
[…] https://conservationbytes.com/2009/03/27/classics-ecological-triage/ […]
LikeLike
[…] CB readers will appreciate, I am firmly in support of the application of conservation triage – that is, the intelligent, objective and realistic way of attributing finite resources to […]
LikeLike
[…] rhinos, or habitats and countries for which WWF scrutinises its funding. Triage in medicine and conservation biology are similar in that both aim to maximise the number of survivors. Nevertheless, in a situation of […]
LikeLike
[…] have time for this nonsense, and this is why we have to consider uncomfortable choices such as triage and controversial energy-generation […]
LikeLike
[…] Biodiversity conservation is about prioritisation – making difficult choices. […]
LikeLike
[…] Classics: Ecological Triage by Bradshaw on Conservation […]
LikeLike
[…] If conservation triage was a corporation, you’d probably be its CEO. What is conservation triage to you, and how should […]
LikeLike
[…] (albeit, at rates preferably slower than they are currently), we cannot properly implement conservation triage, i.e., where do we invest in conservation and […]
LikeLike
Alex Diment recently pointed out that Myers might have been the first to coin the term ‘triage’. View comment here.
LikeLike
[…] ConservationBytes, Corey’s reviewing the idea of conservation/ecological triage, and does a good job of covering the pros and cons of […]
LikeLike
At the risk of looking as if I am plugging my own work (which I am, of course), I would suggest you have a look at our recent paper in PLoS ONE http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008923
We advocate a collaborative way of dealing with prioriization. Let’s move away from divisive ways of looking at the only world we have to save from destruction!
LikeLike