The Importance of Species: Perspectives on Expendability and Triage

Description

A great many species are threatened by the expanding human population. Though the public generally favours environmental protection, conservation does not come without sacrifice and cost. Many decision-makers wonder if every species is worth the trouble. Of what consequence would the extinction of, say, spotted owls or snail darters be? Are some species expendable??;pGiven the reality of limited money for conservation efforts, there is a compelling need for scientists to help conservation practitioners set priorities and identify species most in need of urgent attention. Ecology should be capable of providing guidance that goes beyond the obvious impulse to protect economically valuable species (salmon) or aesthetically appealing ones (snow leopards). Focusing on the value of particular species, this work provides the scientific approaches and analyses available for asking what we can expect from losing (or gaining) species. The contributors are ecologists, theoreticians, and evolutionary biologists who gathered for a symposium honoring Robert T. Paine, the community ecologist who experimentally demonstrated that a single predator species can act as a keystone species whose removal d

Peter Kareiva is a member of The Nature Conservancy's Science Council and the lead scientist for the Pacific Region. Coeditor of "Spatial Ecology" (Princeton) and other books, he has also taught at Brown University and the University of Washington. Simon A. Levin is George M. Moffett Professor of Biology at Princeton University. He is the author of "Fragile Dominion" and served as Editor in Chief of the five-volume "Encyclopedia of Biodiversity".

"I recommend this book both as practical advice for conservation practitioners, and as a summary of recent theory and experiments for any ecologist interested in the interface between species and their communities and ecosystems."--Gareth J. Russell, Ecology