RUSSIA is neglecting some of its most endangered animals because it is spending too much money trying to save glamorous rare species such as the polar bear and Siberian tiger.
Some 95 per cent of Russia’s conservation budget is currently spent protecting the two huge carnivores, the world’s biggest bear and its biggest cat respectively. That leaves just $1.6 million a year for other endangered animals such as the Far Eastern leopard, of which only around 20 remain. But Leonard Polishchuk at Moscow State University says that paying more attention to how many young a species has each year could redress the balance.
To assess whether a particular species is in danger of extinction, Polishchuk considered the number of daughters an animal has per year as well as the likelihood that an animal will be placed on the annual IUCN’s Red List, which is revised annually (Science, vol 297, p 1123).
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Both the tiger and polar bear produce very few young each year and are virtually certain to be listed by the IUCN, indicating that they are highly vulnerable.
But Polishchuk found that other species are in exactly the same situation and deserve a fairer share of the funding. These include the Far Eastern leopard and a small aquatic mammal called the desman.
“It would be fine if the listing process reflected probability of extinction,” says Mark Burgman at the University of Melbourne.
“Unfortunately, there is substantial evidence to suggest that it does not.” He says that the criteria used to draw up the Red List mean that less charismatic or less studied groups such as insects hardly ever get a look-in (91av, 19 January, p 4). “I agree that that the criteria are far from perfect,” says Polishchuk. But because his analysis covers mammals only, he is confident that any biases should be fairly consistent between species.
Conservationists claim that funding for tigers and polar bears can protect the habitat of other endangered species. But Polishchuk says this sort of overlap is rare. Farmers whose livestock are killed by tigers are paid compensation to discourage them from killing the tigers. But there is no compensation for leopard kills, he says, which may explain why tiger populations are stable while leopards are declining.
