Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:30:12.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Selection criteria for flagship species by conservation organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2009

ROBERT HOME ,
CLAUDIA KELLER ,
PETER NAGEL ,
NICOLE BAUER  and
MARCEL HUNZIKER
ROBERT HOME*
Affiliation:
Swiss Federal Research Institute: Forest, Snow and Landscape, Social Sciences in Landscape Research Group, Zurcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland
CLAUDIA KELLER
Affiliation:
Swiss Federal Research Institute: Forest, Snow and Landscape, Social Sciences in Landscape Research Group, Zurcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland University of Basel, Institute of Biogeography (NLU), St Johanns-Vorstadt 10, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland
PETER NAGEL
Affiliation:
University of Basel, Institute of Biogeography (NLU), St Johanns-Vorstadt 10, CH-4056 Basel, Switzerland
NICOLE BAUER
Affiliation:
Swiss Federal Research Institute: Forest, Snow and Landscape, Social Sciences in Landscape Research Group, Zurcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland
MARCEL HUNZIKER
Affiliation:
Swiss Federal Research Institute: Forest, Snow and Landscape, Social Sciences in Landscape Research Group, Zurcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland
*
*Correspondence: Dr Robert Home Tel: +41 44 739 2530 Fax: +41 44 739 2588 e-mail: robert.home@wsl.ch
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Flagship species are among key marketing tools used by conservation organizations to motivate public support, but are often selected in an ad hoc, rather than systematic, manner. Furthermore, it is unclear whether selected flagship species do motivate public support. This paper describes a multi-method exploratory study, carried out in Switzerland, which aimed to determine the selection criteria for flagship species and measure whether a species selected according to these criteria was able to motivate support. Fourteen representatives of international, regional and local conservation organizations were interviewed and the selection criteria for their flagship species were identified. A charismatic species (the great spotted woodpecker) that meets these criteria and an apparently less charismatic species (the clover stem weevil) were selected as treatments in a quantitative experiment with 900 respondents. Using conjoint analysis, it was found that both charismatic and uncharismatic species have the ability to positively influence public preferences for habitat variables that encourage biodiversity in urban landscapes. These results may be used by conservation organizations to assist in the selection of flagship species, and in particular for flagship species that are intended to perform a specific conservation function.

Keywords

biodiversityconjoint analysisconservationflagship speciesmarketingrepresentative species
Type
Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 139 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andelman, S.J. & Fagan, W.F. (2000) Umbrellas and flagships: efficient conservation surrogates or expensive mistakes? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97: 5954–5959.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berger, J. (1997) Population constraints associated with the use of black rhinos as an umbrella species for desert herbivores. Conservation Biology 11: 69–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonn, A, Rodrigues, A.S. & Gaston, K.J. (2002) Threatened and endemic species: are they good indicators of patterns of biodiversity on a national scale? Ecology Letters 5: 307–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brechbühl, U. & Rey, L. (1998) Natur als Kulturelle Leistung: Zur Entstehung des Modernen Umweltdiskurses in der Mehrsprachigen Schweiz [Nature as a Cultural Performance: The Emergence of the Modern Environmental Discourse in Multilingual Switzerland]. Zurich, Switzerland: Seismo Verlag.Google Scholar
Caro, T., Engilis, A. & Gardner, T. (2004) Preliminary assessment of the flagship species concept at a small scale. Animal Conservation 7: 63–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caro, T.M. & O'Doherty, G. (1999) On the use of surrogate species in conservation biology. Conservation Biology 13: 805–814.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clucas, B., McHugh, K. & Caro, T. (2008) Flagship species on covers of US conservation and nature magazines. Biodiversity and Conservation 17: 1517–1528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Entwistle, A.C. & Dunstone, N. (2000) Future priorities for mammalian conservation. In: Priorities for the Conservation of Mammalian Diversity. Has the Panda had its Day? ed. Entwistle, A.C. & Dunstone, N., pp. 369–387. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Entwistle, A.C. & Stephenson, P.J. (2000) Small mammals and the conservation agenda. In: Priorities for the Conservation of Mammalian Diversity. Has the Panda had its Day? ed. Entwistle, A.C. & Dunstone, N., pp. 119–139. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Entwistle, A.C., Mickleburgh, S. & Dunstone, N. (2000) Mammal conservation: current contexts and opportunities. In: Priorities for the Conservation of Mammalian Diversity. Has the Panda had its Day? ed. Entwistle, A.C. & Dunstone, N., pp. 1–7. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Favreau, J.M., Drew, C.A., Hess, G.R., Rubino, M.J., Koch, F.H. & Eschelbach, K.A. (2006) Recommendations for assessing the effectiveness of surrogate species approaches. Biodiversity and Conservation 15: 3949–3969.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankel, O.H. & Soulé, M.E. (1981) Conservation and Evolution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Heberlein, T., Wilson, M., & Bishop, R. (2005) Rethinking the scope test as a criterion for validity in contingent valuation. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 50: 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holsti, O.R. (1968) Content analysis. In: The Handbook of Social Psychology, Research Methods. Vol. 2, ed. Lindzey, G. & Aronson, E., pp. 596–692. London, UK: Addison Wesley.Google Scholar
Hunter, L. & Rinner, L. (2004) The association between environmental perspective and knowledge and concern with species diversity. Society and Natural Resources 17: 517–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, R. & Kaplan, S. (1989) The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Konteleon, A. & Swanson, T. (2003) The willingness to pay for property rights for the giant panda: can a charismatic species be an instrument for nature conservation? Land Economics 79: 483–499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kotler, P. (2003) Principles of Marketing. Sydney, Australia: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Lambeck, R.J. (1997) Focal species: a multi-species umbrella for nature conservation. Conservation Biology 11: 849–856.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leader-Williams, N. & Dublin, H.T. (2000) Charismatic megafauna as ‘flagship species’. In: Priorities for the Conservation of Mammalian Diversity. Has the Panda had its Day? ed. Entwistle, A.C. & Dunstone, N., pp. 53–81. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Linnell, J.D.C., Swenson, J.E. & Andersen, R. (2000) Conservation of biodiversity in Scandinavian boreal forests: large carnivores as flagships, umbrellas, indicators, or keystones? Biodiversity and Conservation 9: 857–868.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lorimer, J. (2006) Nonhuman charisma: which species trigger our emotions and why? ECOS 27: 20–27.Google Scholar
Louviere, J., Hensher, D. & Swait, J. (2000) Stated Choice Methods: Analysis and Applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meffe, G.K., Carroll, C.R., & Contributors (1997) Principles of Conservation Biology. Second edition. Sunderland, Massachusetts, USA: Sinauer Associates.Google Scholar
Nentwig, W., Bacher, S., Beierkunlein, C., Brandl, R. & Grabherr, G. (2004) Ökologie [Ecology]. Heidelberg, Germany: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag.Google Scholar
Orme, B. (2006) Getting Started with Conjoint Analysis: Strategies for Product Design and Pricing Research. Madison, Wisconsin, USA: Research Publishers LLC.Google Scholar
Peterson, R.O. (1988) The pit or the pendulum: issues in large carnivore management in natural ecosystems. In: Ecosystem Management for Parks and Wilderness, ed. Agee, J.K. & Johnson, D.R., pp. 105–117. Seattle, USA: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Samways, M.J., Stork, N.E., Cracraft, J., Eeley, H.A.C., Foster, M., Lund, G. & Hilton-Taylor, C. (1995) Scales, planning and approaches to inventoring and monitoring. In: Global Biodiversity Assessment, ed. Heywood, V.H. & Watson, R.T., pp. 475–517. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
SCBD (2008) The 2010 Biodiversity Target [www document]: URL http://www.cbd.int/2010-target/Google Scholar
Simberloff, D. (1998) Flagship, umbrellas, and keystones: is single-species management passé in the landscape era? Biological Conservation 83: 247–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stern, P. (2000) Towards a coherent theory of environmentally significant behaviour. Journal of Social Issues 56: 407–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thirgood, S. & Redpath, S. (2008) Hen harriers and red grouse: science, politics and human-wildlife conflict. Journal of Applied Ecology 45: 1550–1554.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walpole, M.J. & Leader-Williams, N. (2002) Tourism and flagship species in conservation. Biodiversity and Conservation 11: 543–547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, P.C., Gregory, K.W., Lindley, P.J. & Richards, G. (1997) Economic values of threatened mammals in Britain: a case study of the otter Lutra lutra and the water vole Arvicola terrestris. Biological Conservation 82: 345–354.CrossRefGoogle Scholar