The feasibility of applying a cost-effective approach for assigning priorities for threatened species recovery with a case study from New South Wales, Australia

Abstract

May (2002) estimated that the current rate of extinction of species globally is 100?1000 times background rates. Hence a primary goal of biodiversity management is to bring the rate of extinction back to normal levels. Conservation managers face two interrelated problems: limited time and money, and how to allocate the finite available resources (Bottrill et al. 2008, 2009). In this paper we tackle the second of these problems. Definitions of key terms are in Appendix 1.