The bias in saving nature: How conservation funding favors the familiar

With the World Conservation Congress meeting this week, I thought it was useful to revisit a study published earlier this year on conservation funding. For decades, conservationists have warned that the planet’s attention—and its purse—are skewed toward the charismatic few. A sweeping analysis of some 14,600 conservation projects over 25 years confirms that bias in stark terms. The authors, led by Benoit Guénard, found that 83 percent of funding and 84 percent of projects went to vertebrates, leaving plants, invertebrates, fungi, and algae to divide the scraps. Within vertebrates, mammals and birds claimed nearly all support, while amphibians—though the most threatened of all vertebrate groups—received just 2.5 percent of recent funding, a share that is declining. The pattern is perverse