IN the face of rampaging alien introductions, habitat destruction and climate
change, which species should we try to save? The answer depends on why you think
we should save them at all. Conservation charities shamelessly exploit people鈥檚
fondness for pandas and whales. Conservationists themselves want to save whole
habitats, but usually have a secret passion for, say, the erect-crested penguin.
Then there are seed merchants, who are more worried about wild relatives of food
plants that could carry valuable genes.
So it鈥檚 just as well that the World Conservation Union and the CITES
secretariat draw up lists of threatened species based on impartial scientific
knowledge. Or do they? The lists are now under fire for being biased (see p 4).
Nearly a third of the listed species in Tasmania, for example, are
snails鈥攕imply because these creatures attracted the attention of a few
scientists a century ago. Yet how many other species are vanishing simply
because they鈥檝e never been studied?
The depth of our ignorance is staggering. Projects such as Britain鈥檚 Darwin
Initiative were designed to improve matters, but have attracted only tiny funds.
As the review of the Earth Summit looms, there couldn鈥檛 be a better time to put
the same kind of money into studying biodiversity as goes into sequencing the
human genome or hunting down the Higgs boson. The clock is ticking.
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