Using species distribution and metapopulation models to prioritize conservation actions for threatened species

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Global conservation efforts fall far short of what is required to halt the current extinction crisis. Conservation agencies must prioritize resources, usually by assigning ranks or threat categories based on the estimated probability that a species will go extinct without intervention. Such estimates depend on assessments of both threats and habitat availability. However, new research has shown that threat assessments can be biased if conducted at a single spatial or temporal scale, and that previously-assumed source habitats may actually be sinks. In addition, extinction probability may be underestimated, especially for species in isolated populations and whose decline is slow. Thus, many species may be currently neglected or mismanaged. Models predicting species distributions at multiple scales in space and time, and metapopulation models that mathematically depict interconnected populations, have the potential to greatly improve threat and habitat assessments, and estimates of extinction probability. Using such models across groups of threatened species may also allow the most urgent conservation actions to be determined, to help prevent extinctions. However, the costs of the monitoring data necessary for constructing such models must be balanced against the costs of acting on current knowledge.