Saving species: Conservation marketers choose land over beast

Branding land
Economist.com 7 Jan 08;

FOR decades, conservation organisations have known the value of a flagship species. The so-called charismatic megafauna—giant pandas, tigers, mountain gorillas, African elephants and blue whales, to name but a few—have become well-known brands that, when used in emotive advertising, bring in the conservation dollars.

But relying on flagship species can also cause problems. Conservation organisations with broader goals than saving these specific animals cannot just spend the money raised for tigers on something else.

What is more, many of the cuddly megafauna may not necessarily be the best torch bearers for broader biodiversity. In the trade, such species are known as “indicator species”.

Elephants and tigers, for instance, are poor indicators of broader biodiversity in their regions; saving them will not necessarily help other species. And many species in great danger receive no attention, simply because they happen to be neither cuddly nor recognisable.

One response to this problem has been to focus conservation brand-making on species that need greater attention. The Zoological Society of London has been trying this with what it calls “EDGE” (an acronym for “evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered”) species.

EDGE species are rarely cuddly—in fact, some of them look quite weird to the human eye. They are often the last representative of an entire group of animals; when they go, a branch, rather than a twig, is snapped off the evolutionary tree. EDGE species include the duck-billed platypus, the long-beaked echidna, the aardvark and the dugong.

This year, two EDGE species—the long-eared jerboa and the Yangtze river dolphin—have made global news for very different reasons. The jerboa is an amazing Mongolian nocturnal creature that looks like a miniature kangaroo with floppy ears; it was filmed for the first time hopping in the desert. The Yangtze river dolphin made news because scientists think that it may now have been driven to extinction. Although it is still early days for EDGE species, conservation branding for that dolphin hasn’t been a success.

Some people are starting to wonder whether the one-by-one approach to conservation is really the right solution. With many predicting the extinction of thousands of species, Bob Smith, a researcher in conservation at the University of Kent in Britain, argues that targeting individual species is too narrow. He praises the recent trend toward identifying and branding entire regions as “flagship areas”.

Conservation International, based in Arlington, Virginia, has its biodiversity hotspots: (“the most remarkable places on earth are also the most threatened” is their slogan). These include the tropical Andes, the Brazilian Atlantic forests and Africa’s Cape floristic region. The World Wide Fund for Nature, based in Gland, Switzerland, boasts that it is “working for conservation of the world’s most fabulous places”, which it called “global ecoregions”.

And the African Wildlife Foundation, based in Washington, DC, has its “heartland regions”—areas with unmatched concentrations of wildlife. Visitors to the website are greeted not by a picture of a baby elephant up for adoption but by a bit of landscape and the chance to adopt an African acre in an important place.

Branding flagship areas is an expensive business, but it means that the money raised can be used to support a wide range of conservation projects. Raise money for the lion, and you have to spend it on lions; raise money for a region and you can support the local development of sustainable businesses that benefit both people and wildlife.

Dr Smith also believes that there is an opportunity, here, to make conservation campaigns more aspirational. In other words, conservation groups can start offering to bring about change, instead of just opposing it.

Flagship areas make sense for another reason. Biodiversity is not spread uniformly across the planet, but concentrated in particularly rich areas. Conserving these places can therefore be a good investment. This approach, says Dr Smith, has the virtue of scientific defensibility: science can establish an area’s unique characteristics, then branding can advertise it.

Conservation International has raised $750m to protect biodiversity hotspots. And although scientific debate about whether the “best” places have been chosen remains contentious, Conservation International’s 25 hotspots contain the last remaining habitats of 40% of all terrestrial species.

It isn’t the end of the road for the flagship species. The polar bear, for instance, is now successfully promoting the danger to Arctic wildlife posed by global warming.

Given the success of a recent film, “Ratatouille”, in improving the image of rats, conservation groups should perhaps employ a technique used by marketers in other areas: product placement. Forget champagne, watches and cars: in the next James Bond film, the villain might be found in a Brazilian Atlantic forest hideaway, stroking a long-eared jerboa in a diamond collar.