Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
Research Article

Waiting can be an optimal conservation strategy, even in a crisis discipline

View ORCID ProfileGwenllian D. Iacona, Hugh P. Possingham, and Michael Bode
  1. aAustralian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia;
  2. bCentre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia;
  3. cSchool of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia;
  4. dThe Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA 22203-1606;
  5. eAustralian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD 4811, Australia

See allHide authors and affiliations

PNAS September 26, 2017 114 (39) 10497-10502; first published September 11, 2017; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702111114
Gwenllian D. Iacona
aAustralian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia;
bCentre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia;
cSchool of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Gwenllian D. Iacona
  • For correspondence: g.iacona@uq.edu.au
Hugh P. Possingham
aAustralian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia;
bCentre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia;
cSchool of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia;
dThe Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA 22203-1606;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Michael Bode
eAustralian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD 4811, Australia
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  1. Edited by Gretchen C. Daily, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved August 14, 2017 (received for review February 7, 2017)

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Significance

Every year, more species are driven to extinction by the combined pressures of habitat destruction, invasive species, and climate change. These ongoing losses have created a “crisis culture” in conservation, where project funds are spent as soon as they are received. We challenge this orthodoxy and demonstrate how strategic delays can improve efficiency. Waiting can allow agencies to leverage additional benefits from their funds, through investment, capacity building, or monitoring and research. With the right amount of delay, limited conservation resources can protect more species. Surprisingly, they can even do so in less time. Our results suggest that, in addition to their current focus on where to target resources, conservation managers should carefully choose when to spend these funds.

Abstract

Biodiversity conservation projects confront immediate and escalating threats with limited funding. Conservation theory suggests that the best response to the species extinction crisis is to spend money as soon as it becomes available, and this is often an explicit constraint placed on funding. We use a general dynamic model of a conservation landscape to show that this decision to “front-load” project spending can be suboptimal if a delay allows managers to use resources more strategically. Our model demonstrates the existence of temporal efficiencies in conservation management, which parallel the spatial efficiencies identified by systematic conservation planning. The optimal timing of decisions balances the rate of biodiversity decline (e.g., the relaxation of extinction debts, or the progress of climate change) against the rate at which spending appreciates in value (e.g., through interest, learning, or capacity building). We contrast the benefits of acting and waiting in two ecosystems where restoration can mitigate forest bird extinction debts: South Australia’s Mount Lofty Ranges and Paraguay’s Atlantic Forest. In both cases, conservation outcomes cannot be maximized by front-loading spending, and the optimal solution recommends substantial delays before managers undertake conservation actions. Surprisingly, these delays allow superior conservation benefits to be achieved, in less time than front-loading. Our analyses provide an intuitive and mechanistic rationale for strategic delay, which contrasts with the orthodoxy of front-loaded spending for conservation actions. Our results illustrate the conservation efficiencies that could be achieved if decision makers choose when to spend their limited resources, as opposed to just where to spend them.

  • systematic conservation planning
  • extinction debt
  • conservation finance
  • dynamic optimization
  • forest restoration

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: g.iacona{at}uq.edu.au.
  • Author contributions: G.D.I., H.P.P., and M.B. designed research; G.D.I. and M.B. performed research; G.D.I. and M.B. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; G.D.I. and M.B. analyzed data; and G.D.I., H.P.P., and M.B. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1702111114/-/DCSupplemental.

View Full Text
PreviousNext
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Waiting can be an optimal conservation strategy, even in a crisis discipline
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Waiting as a conservation strategy
Gwenllian D. Iacona, Hugh P. Possingham, Michael Bode
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Sep 2017, 114 (39) 10497-10502; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1702111114

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Waiting as a conservation strategy
Gwenllian D. Iacona, Hugh P. Possingham, Michael Bode
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Sep 2017, 114 (39) 10497-10502; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1702111114
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Article Classifications

  • Biological Sciences
  • Sustainability Science
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 114 (39)
Table of Contents

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Dynamic Habitat Model
    • SI Model of the System Dynamics
    • Discussion
    • Acknowledgments
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Water from a faucet fills a glass.
News Feature: How “forever chemicals” might impair the immune system
Researchers are exploring whether these ubiquitous fluorinated molecules might worsen infections or hamper vaccine effectiveness.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Naumov.
Reflection of clouds in the still waters of Mono Lake in California.
Inner Workings: Making headway with the mysteries of life’s origins
Recent experiments and simulations are starting to answer some fundamental questions about how life came to be.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Radoslaw Lecyk.
Cave in coastal Kenya with tree growing in the middle.
Journal Club: Small, sharp blades mark shift from Middle to Later Stone Age in coastal Kenya
Archaeologists have long tried to define the transition between the two time periods.
Image credit: Ceri Shipton.
Mouse fibroblast cells. Electron bifurcation reactions keep mammalian cells alive.
Exploring electron bifurcation
Jonathon Yuly, David Beratan, and Peng Zhang investigate how electron bifurcation reactions work.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Panda bear hanging in a tree
How horse manure helps giant pandas tolerate cold
A study finds that giant pandas roll in horse manure to increase their cold tolerance.
Image credit: Fuwen Wei.

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Special Feature Articles – Most Recent
  • List of Issues

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Subscribers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Cozzarelli Prize
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates
  • FAQs
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Rights & Permissions
  • About
  • Contact

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490