Setting priorities for species conservation: an avian conservation perspective study

Deciding which species to save and how much effort and resources to allocate is probably one of the most hotly debated issues in biological conservation and wildlife management.
With respect to the issue there are obviously two  categories of criteria: biological/ecological and resource constraints.

                           the Takahe(Porphyrio hochstetteri) one of the most endangered bird species on the planet

A new bioeconometric study  by Nunes et al. (2014) in the field of avian conservation suggests that if our ultimate goal is (and for many conservationists should be) to preserve unique lineages then currently a great deal of this has been wasted or is being wasted. This means for example that species which are sometimes the only member of their genus or family, will have to be given priority and simple artihmetic criteria or total population estimates will have to be only one part of the story and not almost the entire one ,as has been the mainstream approach so far. They argue that phylogenetic diversity and uniqueness is more important.

Indeed many cycles have advocated that species which are more emblematic like the north American bald eagle which is the national bird of the United States of America have a prefference bias over others not so popular or visually appealing.

Certainly there is a psycological bias of animals vs plants as people tend to associate more with them because they can interact more easily.

In any case biologically the approach is sound and the methodology is valid in general for both plants animals, funghi and other and warants the need for a more focused quantified methodology free from cultural and other types of bias and genetic and ecological in basis as a function of available resources. Resources that are both greatly constrained and ever dwindling in the field of biological conservation.