Truth or fiction?
Does too much money go on charismatic species?
Do ‘pretty’ species get all the funding?
WHEN IT COMES to dishing out conservation funds, the authorities favour photogenic species – especially mammals and birds. At least, that’s what many scientists have long complained. Now the suspicion of systemic funding bias has been backed up by a study of how the European Union allocates money for conservation.
The research, published in December 2020 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, looked at how the EU’s flagship LIFE programme spent its money in 1992–2018. Though the analysis only considered projects helping animals, its findings were stark: vertebrates received six times more than invertebrates (€970m as opposed to €150m). Threequarters of the budget went on mammals and birds alone, including such highprofile species as Iberian lynx, imperial eagles and corncrakes. The researchers concluded: “Conservation effort is primarily explained by species’ popularity rather than extinction risk.”
Though such taxonomic bias is widespread, there are notable exceptions. For example, in England, the Back from the Brink programme, launched in 2017, has been helping an array of obscure animals and plants, from the barberry carpet moth to the narrow-headed ant and Cornish path moss. Ben Hoare