Summary

The Center for Biodiversity Outcomes has partnered with the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop a tool to compare different funding allocation strategies for actions to recover endangered species. This tool is called the Endangered Species Recovery Explorer. This work was motivated, in part, by recognition from USFWS of past critiques of its recovery allocation process.

The Recovery Explorer can be used to evaluate potential consequences of alternative resource allocation strategies. For example, the tool can be used to examine how different allocation protocols, under the same budget constraints, affect the number of species recovered and the number of species for which extinction is averted (broken down by geographic region and taxa); how different funding levels affect recovery outcomes; how different values-based inputs (e. g. , desires for taxonomic representation or regional parity in funding) influence optimal allocation and recovery outcomes; and the effect of uncertainty in technical inputs (e. g. , extinction risk, cost) on allocation and outcomes.

The Recovery Explorer tool is designed to be exploratory, not prescriptive, allowing decision makers to examine alternative approaches to resource allocation by making the important components of the decision process transparent.

Since the tool was launched, it has received notorious media attention – including mention in Science and The Economist.