Back in 2017, when Maggie Barry was the conservation minister, DOC launched its Threatened Species Strategy which listed 150 "priority threatened and at-risk species. They also published the code (in R, I think) that they used to determine the critters that made the list of 150 species 1/n
They drew the 150 species from a pool of 483 species that were already receiving conservation attention rather than from the 4000 that need conservation attention.
Also, they automatically included organisms considered "notable" and "socially important."
Thirdly, the algorithm excluded fungi, algae, aquatic invertebrates and marine fish unless they were “notable.”
Neither the algorithm nor strategy mentions non-human charisma, but "notable" organisms are likely to be charismatic. (I can go into this in extreme detail but won't!) 3/n
Using this algorithm to prioritise organisms would have led to the under-representation of non-charismatic organisms. This strategy was superseded by the 2020 Te Mana o te taiao: Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy.
4/5
There is no suggestion that this priority list will be revised by our current government. However, it does show how "people knowing about it and liking it" does get organisms onto such a list.
You can like whatever you like - but personal prefernce is a rubbish way to write conservation policy.
The part in this podcast about 'ugly' animals is worth listening to (I know you know).
On a positive note, I have had a whole class of year 6s roundly, and loudly, disagree with blobfish being ugly. And loving the 'ugly' animals in Nicola Toki's Critters of Aotearoa.
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Will listen! Thank you.
And, although it's not my theory it's one I massively subscribe to, being an ugly-critter (or scary) dosen't make it uncharismatic. It's the boring ones, and the ones that are hard to tell from each other, which are actually uncharismatic.
