Letters Response Finite conservation funds mean triage is unavoidable Madeleine C. Bottrill 1 , Liana N. Joseph 1 , Josie Carwardine 1 , Michael Bode 1 , Carly Cook 1 , Edward T. Game 1 , Hedley Grantham 1 , Salit Kark 1, 2 , Simon Linke 1 , Eve McDonald-Madden 1 , Robert L. Pressey 3 , Susan Walker 4 , Kerrie A. Wilson 1 and Hugh P. Possingham 1 1 The University of Queensland, The Applied Environmental Decision Analysis Centre, The Ecology Centre, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia 2 The Biodiversity Research Group, Department of Evolution, Systematics and Ecology, The Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel 3 Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD 4811, Australia 4 Landcare Research, Private Bag 1930, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand We welcome the interest generated by our recent article [1] on the use of triage principles for allocation of conservation resources in three letters featured in this issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution [2–4] and appreciate the opportu- nity to respond to the issues raised. Jachowski and Kesler [3] and Parr and colleagues [4] from the Alliance for Zero Extinction (AZE) argue against the use of conservation triage. We consider that these authors have confused two issues: the allocation of resources currently available for conservation and decisions on how much society should spend on conservation. The first issue involves wise allo- cation of funds assisted by approaches such as triage and cost-efficient optimization. The second is an issue of societal values and political willingness. Conservationists fight on both fronts, but the issues should not be confused. Continuous threats to biodiversity and inadequate fund- ing make it inevitable that conservation managers apply triage in decision making. Current levels of funding are several orders of magnitude below what is needed to return rates of extinction to natural levels [5]. Under existing constraints to funding and capacity, conservation managers are faced with a resource allocation problem: which actions to take to maximize the achievement of their conservation goals given a fixed budget. If managers ignore the cost of management as well as (or along with) socioeconomic [6] and technical uncertainties of success, or attempt to manage everything simultaneously, they will not maximize conser- vation outcomes. In practice, all conservation managers and agencies allocate limited budgets to specific actions in the knowledge that there will be habitats and species that receive no, or less, investment and that these might degrade or become extinct owing to the choices made. Species prioritization, as discussed by Jachowski and Kesler [3] and Parr and colleagues [4], was not the essen- tial message of our paper. We argued that triage is not about abandoning difficult-to-save species, but rather about prioritizing actions given finite resources. Triage might employ other benefit-functions and objectives, such as phylogenetic diversity (as suggested by Faith [2]) or ecosystem services; our point is simply that triage provides a rational approach to allocating a given budget amongst management actions to achieve a stated goal. With a goal of maximizing species persistence, AZE have already applied triage in their process of selecting priority sites and species, albeit a triage approach that is not explicit about the opportunity costs of focusing efforts on only the most threatened. Furthermore, their efforts will not secure every species with 100% certainty in perpetuity. We do not argue that threatened species are necessarily expens- ive to save, only that the costs and uncertainties of their attempted salvation need to be considered. As an example of this approach, the Department of Conservation in New Zealand has developed a cost-efficiency framework for threatened species conservation based on triage principles, meaning that recovery of more species could be funded at a level of higher success [7]. Far from ‘sanctioning extinction in the name of effi- ciency’ [3], a conservation triage approach admits the possibility of extinction, both explicitly and transparently. Only when the consequences of inadequate funding are apparent can there be a realistic debate about the budget required to achieve our goals. By taking a triage approach in allocating funding for actions to save threatened Aus- tralian bird species, McCarthy and colleagues demon- strated that increasing current budgets by three times could decrease the future number of extinct species to one [8]. Thus, being explicit about potential consequences (i.e. extinctions) of inadequate funding can elicit more resources from governments and donors than fostering the ‘we can save everything’ delusion. By denying the realities of a constrained budget, we can lead policy makers to believe that current resources are sufficient to imple- ment management actions needed to reduce extinction to zero. We too see possible opportunities for increased con- servation funding from carbon markets [4] and other sources. However, while conservation weathers the pre- sent global recession [9], we foresee that prioritization will become ever more vital. References 1 Bottrill, M. et al. (2008) Is conservation triage just smart decision- making? Trends Ecol. Evol. 23, 649–654 2 Faith, D.P. (2009) Phylogenetic triage, efficiency and risk aversion. Trend Ecol. Evol. 24, 182 Corresponding author: Bottrill, M.C. (m.bottrill@uq.edu.au). Update Trends in Ecology and Evolution Vol.24 No.4 183