When you think of wildlife conservation it’s probably fair to say that many of us think of pandas, lions or similarly well known and much loved species.  Much of the funding and resources that go into conservation therefore find their way to those species, with the several million other species on the planet struggling to garner much of either.

A recent study suggests that the crowd may help us to gain a much better understanding of the relative risk levels experienced by the majority of species that go under the radar.

“Conservation funds are going to high-profile species,” the authors say. “But for most of the 9 million species on Earth, we have no idea if they are in trouble or the resources to conduct field surveys. In a competition for funds, tigers beat snails, even pretty ones, every time.”

The wisdom of crowds

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) assessed the status of the Manus green tree snail, which is found on the Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, via the estimates of the crowd.

They surveyed around four hundred people in the main market on the island to determine how abundant they thought the snail was.  The data was then crunched by WCS to create a profile on the range of the snail, any environmental factors affecting its distribution, and the rate of its decline in numbers.

This was then used to petition the IUCN, after which the snail was placed on the ‘Near Threatened’ list of endangered species.

Successfully deploying the crowd

The authors suggest that the success of the crowd hinges on the local and independent knowledge of participants.  In Manus, for instance, many of the inhabitants live a subsistence lifestyle in and around the forests so come into daily contact with the snail.

It’s probably fair to say, therefore, that the method is not suitable for all circumstances, nor is it a replacement for more traditional, quantitative field monitoring methods.  The authors suggest however that it is viable enough to provide for basic conservation decision making.  For instance, it may be wholly suitable for determining the threat status of a species, especially when funds for a field survey aren’t available.

“Understandably, people want to see calibration of this technique with a field survey. But it’s a dilemma–we used Wisdom of the Crowd because there isn’t much money for projects on snails, but to do a comparison between field survey and Wisdom of Crowds would require money for both. While some wildlife managers may be able to access such funds for sexy charismatic animals, for the drabber and more unloved members of the animal kingdom, the choice will be between a rough low cost assessment technique like Wisdom of Crowds or nothing at all,” they conclude.