Social valuation of biodiversity relative to other types of assets at risk in wildfire

Abstract

AbstractEnvironmental crises, such as wildfires, can cause major losses of human life, infrastructure, biodiversity and cultural values. In many such situations, incident controllers must make fateful choices about what to protect – and hence what to abandon. Conventionally, human life is prioritized ahead of property, with biodiversity last. With increasing incidence and severity of environmental crises, such prioritization will lead to a recurring pattern of acute biodiversity losses, including extinctions. We investigated Australian social attitudes to this dilemma, to consider whether existing policies and protocols for asset prioritization reflect community values. We used best‐worst scaling to assess preferences across a set of 11 assets representing human life, infrastructure, biodiversity and cultural values. Survey respondents overwhelmingly prioritized protection of a single human life, even if that choice resulted in extinction of other species. Inanimate (replaceable) objects were accorded lowest priority. Amongst biodiversity assets, most respondents ranked protecting a population of the iconic koala ahead of preventing the extinction of a snail and a plant species. Women showed more preference than men for protecting koalas, wallabies and sheep, and less preference for protecting a house, shed, shrub and rock carving; Indigenous people showed more preference for Indigenous cultural assets. These results variably support current policy, in that they emphasize the importance the community places on protection of human life, but results diverge from conventional practice in rating some biodiversity assets ahead of infrastructure. The preference for protecting a population of koalas ahead of action taken to prevent the extinction of an invertebrate and plant species corroborates previous research reporting biases in the way people value nature. If non‐charismatic species are not to be treated as expendable, then the case for preventing their extinction needs to be better made to the community. Given the increasing global incidence of high severity wildfires, further sampling of societal preferences amongst diverse asset types is warranted, with results from such sampling then informing planning, policy and practice relating to wildfire and other catastrophic events. Other pre‐emptive targeted management actions (such as translocations) will be needed to conserve biodiversity likely to be imperilled by wildfires, and especially so for non‐iconic species.ARTICLE IMPACT STATEMENT: Regarding protection from wildfire, respondents prioritized protection of 1 human life even if the choice lead to extinction of a species.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved