Cute Enough to Save?
You’d think conservation was about saving those most at risk. But like everything else under human control, it’s a popularity contest — and the losers are dying.
A study reviewing 14,600 conservation projects over 25 years, with nearly $2 billion spent, reveals what most people don’t want to hear: the vast majority of threatened species receive no support at all. Fewer than 6% of species listed as globally threatened have been helped. Meanwhile, 29% of funding went to species not even at risk.
Charisma, not need, decides who gets saved.
The Conservation Popularity Contest
Large, photogenic mammals dominate the funding pool. Grey wolves and brown bears — listed as “least concern” — each got hundreds of dedicated projects. Meanwhile, amphibians, who are the most threatened vertebrate group, received under 3% of funding. That’s despite making up around 25% of all threatened vertebrates.
Rodents and bats? Ignored.
Snakes, lizards, and crocodiles? Underfunded.
Plants, fungi, and invertebrates? Barely noticed.
Turtles and tortoises took 91% of all reptile-specific funds. That’s not a conservation strategy — that’s a PR strategy.
What Funding Doesn’t Do
More money doesn’t mean more success. The study found no consistent link between funding and population recovery. Why? Because most projects fixate on individual species like they're isolated exhibits in a zoo. In reality, ecosystems are messy, tangled, and interdependent.
Real conservation isn’t about photo ops with elephants. It’s about protecting networks — not mascots.
What We’re Refusing to Confront
Conservation projects love to blame the wildlife trade, a lack of awareness, and climate change. But the biggest threat to biodiversity isn’t what we fail to protect — it’s who we farm.
Animal agriculture is the leading driver of habitat destruction and species extinction. Forests are cleared, wetlands drained, and wild animals displaced or slaughtered to make room for the ones we breed. Not for survival. For profit.
Conservation can’t afford to tiptoe around this any longer. You don’t save frogs, orchids, and bees by bulldozing their homes to plant monoculture feed for chickens and pigs.
The Species We Let Die
We’re in the middle of the sixth mass extinction — and it’s not being caused by comets or volcanoes. It’s being caused by choice.
Not by nature.
Not by inevitability.
By selective compassion.
Conservation today is less about preserving biodiversity and more about reinforcing human aesthetics. The animals we deem cute, majestic, or meme-worthy are our chosen survivors. Everyone else? Collateral.
The researchers behind this landmark study are calling for something radical: fairness. They propose centralised databases, better coordination, and prioritising those with the fewest chances left. It’s not revolutionary science. It’s basic justice.
Conservation Is Supremacism in Disguise
This is what speciesism looks like — even inside movements claiming to fight for the wild. We’ve extended the logic of hierarchy to non-human life. The powerful get platforms. The less glamorous are left to vanish.
If conservation continues to serve bias instead of biodiversity, it will fail. Not because extinction was inevitable, but because we treated life like marketing.
And some animals just didn’t make the cut.