Most global conservation funds go to larger, charismatic animals, leaving critically important but less fashionable species deprived, a 25-year study has revealed.
Scientists have found that of the $1.963bn allocated to projects worldwide, 82.9% was assigned to vertebrates. Plants and invertebrates each accounted for 6.6% of the funding, while fungi and algae were barely represented at less than 0.2%.
Disparities persisted among vertebrates, with 85% of all resources going to birds and mammals, while amphibians received less than 2.8% of funding.
Further funding bias was found within specific groups such as large-bodied mammals towards elephants and rhinoceros. Although they represent only a third of that group, they were the focus of 84% of such conservation projects and received 86% of the funding.
Meanwhile mammals such as rodents, bats, kangaroos and wallabies remained severely underfunded, despite being considered endangered.
“Nearly 94% of species identified as threatened, and thus at direct risk of extinction, received no support,” said Benoit Guénard, the lead author of the study. “Protecting this neglected majority, which plays a myriad of roles in ecosystems and represents unique evolutionary strategies, is fundamental if our common goal is to preserve biodiversity.”
Alice Hughes, a coordinating lead author of the research, said: “The sad reality is that our perception of ‘what is threatened’ is often limited, and so a few large mammal species may receive more funding than the near-12,000 species of reptile combined.”
“Not only does this limit our ability to implement protective measures, but it closes opportunities to researchers. I have lost count of the number of times collaborators have switched taxa [organism populations] purely because theirs was difficult to fund. This leads to a chicken and egg situation – some of the groups with the highest rates of recent extinction, like freshwater snails, have the most outdated assessments.”
The study, led by Guénard and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong, analysed 14,566 conservation projects spanning a 25-year period between 1992 and 2016.
A comparison of the amount of funding per species was drawn against each species’ status in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of threatened species, which gives an assessment on animal extinction risk levels.
“We are in the midst of a global species extinction crisis,” said research author Bayden Russell. “The number of threatened species is increasing at an unprecedented rate across a wide range of groups and regions globally.”
“We need to change how we think about conservation funding. The community needs to be educated about the value of biodiversity and protecting species that are under threat, not just those that we have an affinity to.”
The research highlighted a larger funding imbalance than had previously been identified, and found that despite their importance to ecosystems, the bias against invertebrates could be up to 40% higher than previously reported.
The majority of all projects (57%) and funding (53%) also protected single species, instead of focusing on multiple creatures.
“Governments, in particular those which represent the main pool of funding, need to follow a more rigorous and scientifically-driven approach in conservation funding,” said Guénard. “Further global cooperation to study and protect species-rich groups, as well as share information on conservation investments, is also urgently needed.”
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