
Overpaying to save some endangered species, and barely funding others - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/03/were-overpaying-to-save-some-endangered-species-and-barely-funding-others/
======
jonah
My uncle works with the endangered Desert Tortoise in the Mojave. It's big and
it's an indicator species.

There are these conservation contractors who primarily do two kinds of work:

1) Study the tortoise population in an area. They walk grids in the desert
locating all the individuals. They take their vitals in situ, tag them and
possibly affix a radio transmitter and leave them in place to re-find again at
a later date. This gives them of how the individuals and population is doing
over time.

2) They find and relocate tortoises prior to large development projects in the
desert. They did this for the Ivanpah solar plant on the 15 near the CA/NV
border and for the expansion of Fort Irwin's bombing range. The animals they
find here are captured and moved to another location they've selected in the
area.

The teams he works on are probably 6-10 people who spend several months at a
time in the spring and fall when the weather is acceptable living out in the
desert doing this work. _They make software engineer money doing this._

~~~
cbsmith
> They make software engineer money doing this.

You say like that is a bad/surprising thing.

~~~
nickff
My take-away from the parent post is that some people are extracting monopoly
rents from 'conservation' efforts, and this waste is partially responsible for
neglect of other endangered species.

~~~
cbsmith
...and so you are saying that software engineers should be extracting monopoly
rents, but conservationists shouldn't? (I'm not sure I'd agree with either
point.)

As the article points out, this is the least of our worries.

~~~
nickff
Oh, I don't think (any kind of) engineers should be entitled to extract
monopoly rents, which is why I am against all (or almost all) occupational
licensing.

The concern which the (great-grand-) parent brings up is that a great deal of
money is being spent on 'conservation' efforts which may be a poor allocation
of limited resources that could be better used (to protect a greater variety
of more endagered species).

~~~
cbsmith
> Oh, I don't think (any kind of) engineers should be entitled to extract
> monopoly rents, which is why I am against all (or almost all) occupational
> licensing.

Then it doesn't matter how it compares to what software engineers are paid.

~~~
nickff
> _" Then it doesn't matter how it compares to what software engineers are
> paid."_

I never said (or believed) that the relative amount was particularly relevant;
I had (correctly) assumed that the comparison had been made to give the HN
crowd some idea of the amount those particular workers were paid without
divulging exact figures.

~~~
cbsmith
I had presumed (correctly) it implied something about how much these people
are being paid as if that was part of the problem.

It isn't.

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PaulHoule
It's the same with diseases.

I meet some guy I was a grad student with he tells me he is working on cures
for cancer at his startup and I think he's a Poseur, now if he was working to
cure Tourette's syndrome I'd take him seriously.

Joe Biden has a personal reason to advance Nixon's "War on Cancer", but let's
see a government or private effort to cure chronic pain -- it is such a
tragedy to see people dying left and right from opioid addiction which comes
from a lack of safe and effective treatment for non-cancer pain.

You can go after it after the fact with addiction treatment, law enforcement,
etc. but it is much better to catch that horse before it leaves the barn.

~~~
CWuestefeld
This is always going to happen given the nature of democracy. For afflictions
that have a well-defined demographic (HIV, breast cancer) you get an easily-
organized voting bloc, and diffuse costs across a broad population. But when
the afflicted are themselves more diverse, it's much more difficult to mount
the same activism.

I don't mean to get political, but this is a danger of governmental
involvement in health care. Given scarcity of resources, it's necessary to
prioritize their allocation. Somebody's got to decide where that funding goes,
and this is the kernel of truth that was exaggerated into the "death panel"
meme.

~~~
PaulHoule
Private organizations can feel the pinch from activists too.

I think also some groups are better or worse at marketing and/or lucky vs
unlucky. For instance, diabetes is a diverse condition and the American
Diabetes Association is right up there with the Breast Cancer Industrial
Complex. We even see medical clinics in our area that are working pretty hard
to figure out how to treat medicare patients with that condition both properly
and effectively even though it has taken a long time.

So far as politics goes, chronic pain is connected strongly with disability
and pushing it back could get a lot of people off disability and back in the
workforce again.

------
danso
I don't know if the study's author has a link to her compiled data but I was
curious to see if the data was easily available officially...and it turns out
there's a convenient (convenient, if you know how to scrape and parse PDF
tables) list here:

[http://www.fws.gov/Endangered/esa-
library/index.html](http://www.fws.gov/Endangered/esa-library/index.html)

------
sremani
Pricenomics, everything is bullshit book had this problem described, where
cute-species get the love and not so cute ones even though more endangered and
vital to eco system, do not get love and subsequent funding. That is why WWF
has a Panda, cute animal vs. some smelly weird looking frog.

~~~
mrob
But whales get a lot of support, and whales are not very cute. They have tiny
eyes compared to their head, and eye:head ratio is probably the most important
factor for determining cuteness. And humpback whales, one of the most popular
species, have ugly tubercles on their skin which you'd probably mistake for a
disease if you didn't know better. There must be more to popularity than just
cuteness.

~~~
munificent
Whales:

* Sing songs to each other

* Are graceful, gentle giants

* Most are herbivores so don't kill other cute stuff

* Are famously intelligent

* Raise their young, live in groups, and communicate socially

They may not be cute, but they have a lot of appealing characteristics and few
unappealing ones.

The bumps are a little funny looking, but they just make whales look like
giant pickles to me.

~~~
douche
Probably the most charismatic of the whales, of Free Willy and Seaworld fame,
the Orca, is kind of an asshole and kills sharks and seals for fun, stunning
and tossing them back and forth like a hacky-sack[2].

[1] [http://www.tvthrong.co.uk/2009/10/nature-shock-series-
premie...](http://www.tvthrong.co.uk/2009/10/nature-shock-series-premiere-the-
whale-that-ate-the-great-white/)

[2] [https://youtu.be/TuUFjvBnu9g?t=70](https://youtu.be/TuUFjvBnu9g?t=70)

~~~
munificent
Yeah, orcas are bastards. But they look like cuddly sea pandas!

------
sosuke
It takes constant fighting to prompt saving a single species. Take a look at
the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrocercus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrocercus)
for instance. They are endangered by husbandry and mineral mining which both
have deep pockets. Most of the population isn't an issue. The Sage-grouse had
a PBS special made out of it even. I think that makes a big difference to make
a detailed documentary of the life cycle of endangered species.

Spreading the money out evenly would doom them all I bet.

~~~
eru
> Spreading the money out evenly would doom them all I bet.

People can answer that question with science. (And no one argued for spreading
the money out equally. The argument is for a cleverer more effective use.)

------
tomahunt
There must be many groups like this these days. There's one large lab I know
[1] where they use a pile of statistics, modelling and optimisation to
investigate these types of problems. Maybe check out the publications of the
group leader [2].

[1] [http://www.possinghamlab.org/](http://www.possinghamlab.org/)

[2]
[https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=lSYOB3cAAAAJ&hl...](https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=lSYOB3cAAAAJ&hl=en)

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machbio
I had a similar viewpoint about indian government funding the tiger reserves
to preserve the last few knowns tigers - but I was told by a range officer
(people who work at forest) that this preserving tiger plays into the hands of
the Food Chain and there by preserving the eco-system as a whole.. Hence, I
dont think its fair to say you are funding only endangered species but you are
funding for the eco-system..

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giarc
I always think of panda's when talking/reading about endangered species. They
likely receive an incredible amount of funding and effort to save the species.
I wonder if the goal is to save the national symbol rather than to save the
species.

~~~
patio11
A useful phrase to know if you want to read up on this topic: "charismatic
megafauna." It is well-discussed in the literature.

~~~
giarc
Interesting, summed up nicely in this line from the wiki page "By directing
public attention to the diminishing numbers of giant panda due to habitat
loss, for example, conservation groups can raise support for the protection of
the panda and for the entire ecosystem of which it is a part." With the last
few words being key.

Thanks for letting me know about that topic.

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dintech
I thought this was going to be about COBOL. :)

