Abstract
A widespread opinion is that conservation efforts disproportionately benefit charismatic species. However, this doesn’t mean that they are not threatened, and which species are “charismatic” remains unclear. Here, we identify the 10 most charismatic animals and show that they are at high risk of imminent extinction in the wild. We also find that the public ignores these animals’ predicament and we suggest it could be due to the observed biased perception of their abundance, based more on their profusion in our culture than on their natural populations. We hypothesize that this biased perception impairs conservation efforts because people are unaware that the animals they cherish face imminent extinction and do not perceive their urgent need for conservation. By freely using the image of rare and threatened species in their product marketing, many companies may participate in creating this biased perception, with unintended detrimental effects on conservation efforts, which should be compensated by channeling part of the associated profits to conservation. According to our hypothesis, this biased perception would be likely to last as long as the massive cultural and commercial presence of charismatic species is not accompanied by adequate information campaigns about the imminent threats they face.
Highlights
The most charismatic species remain severely endangered, and rather unknowingly so by the general public, a situation that has dramatically worsened over the last decades despite massive cultural and commercial presence
Our study highlights that the 10 most charismatic animals for the public are in a dire conservation state but that the public is generally ignorant of this
Charismatic species remain one of the most efficient vehicles to motivate the general public to support conservation action [56,57,58]. If these species go extinct in the wild, the whole conservation movement might suffer by losing its point in the eye of a large part of the general public
Summary
We find that the public ignores these animals’ predicament and we suggest it could be due to the observed biased perception of their abundance, based more on their profusion in our culture than on their natural populations. We hypothesize that this biased perception impairs conservation efforts because people are unaware that the animals they cherish face imminent extinction and do not perceive their urgent need for conservation. The competitive advantage of virtual populations reinforces the perception that natural populations are not threatened and may paradoxically lessen the necessary conservation efforts and accentuate the risk of extinction of these species most cherished by the general public.
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