WCS 3-Sentence Science

Spending to Save: What Will It Cost to Halt Australia’s Extinction Crisis?

December 13, 2019

CREDIT: JULIE LARSEN MAHER/WCS

Each year, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists publish more than 300 peer-reviewed studies and papers. “WCS 3-Sentence Science” is a regular tip-sheet — in bite sized helpings — of some of this published work.

Here we present work by WCS’s James Watson on the impact of under-investment on species facing extinction in Australia.

1. Most of Australia’s imperiled species continue to decline or go extinct and a contributing cause is inadequate investment in conservation management.
2. Researchers show that annual spending on targeted threatened species recovery is around U.S.$92m (AU$122m) which is around one tenth of that spent by the U.S. endangered species recovery program, and about 15% of what is needed to avoid extinctions and recover threatened species.
3. The scientists’ approach to estimating funding needs for species recovery could be applied in any jurisdiction and could be scaled up to calculate what is needed to achieve international goals for ending the species extinction crisis.

Study and Journal: “Spending to save: What will it cost to halt Australia’s extinction crisis?” from Conservation Letters
WCS Co-Author(s): James Watson, Director, Science and Research Initiative

For more information, contact: Stephen Sautner, 718–220–3682, ssautner@wcs.org.