The cost of saving a species

Summary

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The Indicator from Planet Money: "The Cost of Saving a Species"

Date: September 9, 2025
Hosts: Waylon Wong, Darian Woods
Guest: Professor Hugh Possingham, University of Queensland

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the urgent and complex questions behind species conservation: How do we decide which species to save, and where do our limited dollars have the most impact? Host Darian Woods and Waylon Wong speak with eminent conservation scientist Hugh Possingham, who advocates for a cost-effective, quantitative approach to maximizing biodiversity. The show also features a feel-good segment about saving the adorable Pinzón tortoise in the Galápagos.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Extinction Crisis and What's at Stake

• Human activity has led to extinction rates now "roughly 100 times the normal rate" (Hugh Possingham, 00:47).
• Beyond the ethical case, losing species can mean lost opportunities for breakthroughs (e.g., Ozempic drug development inspired by Gila monster venom) (00:30).

Traditional Conservation Biases: Cute and Critically Endangered

• Conservation funding often flows to the most threatened and most charismatic species—even when saving them is very difficult and resource-intensive (02:33, 02:54).
• Hugh’s realization: “Some of these species are really expensive to save... Maybe almost impossible to save. So there’s two other factors other than how likely a species is to go extinct: cost and probability of success.” (Hugh Possingham, 02:54)

Quantitative Framework: Maximizing Biodiversity Per Dollar

• Possingham advocates for decision-making based on:
  • Likelihood of extinction
  • Cost of intervention
  • Probability of success (03:14)
• This approach challenges emotional responses: “Do you want to save this one bird or mammal or do you want to save 50 species of plant which may not be currently as threatened, but much cheaper to save?” (Hugh Possingham, 03:40)
• Governments often underfund the majority of at-risk species: “The federal government only funds 110 of the 2000 listed species.” (Hugh Possingham, 04:10)

Where and How to Get the Best Conservation ‘Value’

• “In the supermarket of species there is a real bargain. Local plants.” (Hugh Possingham, 05:04)
  • Example: Saving a threatened plant can cost just $20,000 with community effort.
• Most biodiversity is concentrated in the tropics, especially on islands with high numbers of endemic species (05:31–05:49).
• “If I were to invest a dollar of my own money, I would look in Indonesia and Madagascar, tropical island nations.” (Hugh Possingham, 06:09)

Conservation Techniques: What Works Best

• Many standard approaches exist: captive breeding, habitat protection, anti-poaching patrols (06:41–07:02).
• Possingham is skeptical of captive breeding because it is extremely expensive and helps few other species:
  • “The cost [of the condor captive breeding program] was tens, if close to $100 million... but it doesn't help many other things.” (Hugh Possingham, 07:02)
• Preserving land/habitat protection has multiplier effects—protects whole ecosystems (07:27):
  • Example: India’s rising tiger numbers due to habitat protection, helping many species.
• On islands, removing invasive predators (e.g., rats, pigs, cats) is highly cost-effective—provided local community support is ensured (07:50, 08:10).

Case Study: Galápagos Pinzón Tortoise

• Charity Island Conservation followed Possingham’s playbook: focus on tropical islands, address invasive species.
• The Pinzón tortoise suffered 150+ years without new hatchlings due to invasive rats (08:38).
• Solution: Poisoned rat bait deployed with community support; within 1–2 years, successful hatchlings returned (08:53).
  • “[After intervention], you’re seeing hatchlings that are successfully growing up on the island again.” (Waylon Wong, 09:19)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We are in a mass extinction and the rate at which species are going extinct is roughly 100 times the normal rate.”
  — Hugh Possingham [00:47]

• “This was kind of an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach. A lot of the money was also flowing to cute animals, and that's pretty typical in conservation.”
  — Darian Woods [02:45]

• “Cost and probability of success. You'll notice cuteness not on the list.”
  — Waylon Wong [03:14]

• “Some of these species are really expensive to save... So there’s two other factors... One is cost and one is probability of success.”
  — Hugh Possingham [02:54]

• “In the supermarket of species there is a real bargain. Local plants.”
  — Hugh Possingham [05:04]

• “If I were to invest a dollar of my own money, I would look in Indonesia and Madagascar, tropical island nations.”
  — Hugh Possingham [06:09]

• “The cost [of the condor captive breeding program] was tens, if close to $100 million probably over the last 30 or 40 years... but it doesn't help many other things. Captive breeding.”
  — Hugh Possingham [07:02]

• “When you protect jungles and grasslands, not just the target species, but all the other life in that habitat too.”
  — Waylon Wong [07:40]

• “It was like a retirement village for tortoises.”
  — Darian Woods, on tortoises unable to breed before rat eradication [08:53]

• “I know we're not supposed to be just focused on what's cute, but these are so cute.”
  — Waylon Wong [09:34]

• “If we are maximizing our adorableness per dollar, I think that is money well spent.”
  — Darian Woods [09:44]

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Key Timestamps

• 00:11 – Opening: Recent extinctions and what’s at stake
• 00:47 – Mass extinction rates explained by Hugh Possingham
• 02:33 – How conservation money has traditionally been spent
• 03:14 – The concept of cost and probability of success
• 03:40 – “Trolley problem” of conservation: one bird vs. 50 plants?
• 05:04 – Bargain: Saving local plants
• 06:09 – Where every dollar goes farthest: tropical islands
• 07:02 – Questioning captive breeding, highlighting habitat protection
• 08:10 – Importance of local community buy-in
• 08:38 – Galápagos tortoise case study: problem and solution
• 09:19 – Tortoise hatchlings return and hosts react to video

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Takeaways & Actionable Insights

• Conservation dollars stretch farthest by factoring in cost, likelihood of success, and broad ecosystem impact.
• Tropical islands are biodiversity hotspots and high-impact targets for investment.
• Prioritize habitat protection and predator removal over expensive species-specific breeding programs.
• Supporting local communities is vital for long-term conservation success.
• Sometimes, cost-effectiveness has the delightful side effect of saving especially adorable species.

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For more conservation stories and adorable tortoise videos, visit Planet Money’s Instagram.

Transcript

[Waylon Wong]

Npr.

[Darian Woods]

The splendid poison frog, the Yangtze river dolphin, the Maui akapa songbird. These are all animals that went extinct over the last couple of decades.

[Waylon Wong]

Those are sounds our grandchildren won't hear. And it could even mean that medicines never get discovered.

[Darian Woods]

Yeah. Ozempic was developed after a chance discovery with venom from the Gila monster lizard, and that lizard is near threatened. Hugh Possingham is a scientist at the University of Queensland in Australia. And Hugh says these extinctions are largely due to human activity.

[Hugh Possingham]

We are in a mass extinction and the rate at which species are going extinct is roughly 100 times the normal rate.

[Waylon Wong]

So if you're wondering how to help, what kind of donation or policy would have the most impact, Hugh actually has an answer. He has a way to maxim biodiversity. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Waylon Wong.

[Darian Woods]

And I'm Darian Woods. Today on the show Cost Effective Conservation, Hugh challenges ecologists to think more like economists. And we meet some incredibly cute tortoise hatchlings on a tropical island.

[Waylon Wong]

Oh, I can't wait.

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[Darian Woods]

If you want to learn how to save species cheaply, Hugh Possingham's your guy.

[Hugh Possingham]

My life is very complicated. I'm on 31 boards and committees outside my day job. I used to be the chief scientist of the Nature conservancy in the U.S.

[Waylon Wong]

Hughes says his big aha moment came in the late 1990s when he was speaking with some officials from the Australian.

[Hugh Possingham]

Federal government and they were talking about spending money, recovering species. And at that point in time, the primary strategy was to spend almost all your money on the faeces that were most critically endangered.

[Darian Woods]

This was kind of an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach. A lot of the money was also flowing to cute animals, and that's pretty typical in conservation.

[Hugh Possingham]

And I was sitting at the back of the room as an invited expert and I said some of these species are really expensive to save. It's going to be hard to save them and maybe almost impossible to save. So there's two other factors other than how likely a species is to go extinct that I think we should be thinking about. One is cost and one is probability of success.

[Waylon Wong]

Cost and probability of success. You'll notice cuteness not on the list.

[Darian Woods]

Maybe we could add it on later.

[Waylon Wong]

This was a simple but radical way to think about conservation. Basically, Hugh was saying the government could rank what would save species most cheaply and redirect its money there. Kind of like the cost per pound labels you see in the supermarket. In that meeting with the Australian officials, Hugh said that the current approach actually meant more extinctions.

[Hugh Possingham]

Some of the things we're working on, some of these very expensive birds and mammals which are iconic, we could use that money to save 50 species of threatened plant. Do you want to save this one bird or mammal or do you want to save 50 species of plant which may not be currently as threatened, but much cheaper to save?

[Darian Woods]

Was that a sacrilegious kind of thing to say in the room?

[Hugh Possingham]

It is pretty well. And they said, you can't do that. We can't allow species to go extinct. And I said, you are already. Because in fact, at the moment, for example, the federal government only funds 110 of the 2000 listed species. So most countries are not spending money on the majority of their threatened species.

[Waylon Wong]

Darren, I just realized this is like the trolley problem, but for endangered species it is.

[Darian Woods]

And while it's never been solved, today we're actually going to solve it for species.

[Waylon Wong]

Oh, I can't wait.

[Darian Woods]

Watch out, animals and plants of the world. Anyway, Hugh never convinced the Australian federal government of his quantitative approach to conservation. Deciding what lives and dies is an intensely emotional subject. But Huw is a trailblazer in the world of quantitative ecology and he's had wins elsewhere. The New Zealand government, for example, picked up his framework. Also a bunch of non profits and regular people trying to make a difference.

[Waylon Wong]

Hugh says that in the supermarket of species there is a real bargain. Local plants.

[Hugh Possingham]

It might cost you $20,000 to save a threatened plant. A small group of people can put up the fences to protect them from herbivores. They can grow them without permits, they can spread them around.

[Waylon Wong]

But if you're wanting to save animals and are thinking globally. Hughes says a little math goes a long way. He points toward some general principles. First, go where the largest number of threatened species near the equator, the tropics are more biodiverse.

[Hugh Possingham]

Those Parts of the tropics where we're losing species are also more important.

[Darian Woods]

And once you get even more narrow, zooming in on tropical islands, you start to get a lot of endemic species. That means species found nowhere else on the planet.

[Hugh Possingham]

Indonesia has the most endemic bird species, for example, in the world.

[Waylon Wong]

Islands also mean that animals and birds have evolved for millions of years without predators found on the main continents, like cats or rats that eat bird eggs. So the island species don't have the same defenses.

[Hugh Possingham]

People arrive, they bring pigs, they bring rats. A lot of the birds were flightless. So literally a thousand bird species have disappeared from islands.

[Darian Woods]

And so that's why Hugh says if he were to invest a dollar of his own money, he would look in Indonesia and Madagascar, tropical island nations, they're.

[Hugh Possingham]

Losing species left, right and centre, and they are globally significant.

[Darian Woods]

Globally significant because we might value different creatures differently. You might want to save some animals more because they're more unusual, or they might be more culturally significant.

[Waylon Wong]

Okay, so that's the framework bang for buck high in tropical areas, especially islands. So now what do we do, Darian?

[Darian Woods]

Right. So there are a lot of different ways to help. You could capture some salamanders, say, and breed them in a zoo. You could protect a coral reef, you could patrol a forest to protect against poachers. And Hugh says it does depend on the exact situation. But one technique he doesn't think is cost effective is captive breeding programs.

[Hugh Possingham]

One of your more expensive threatened species. The Californian condor. They're amazing. I mean, they're gigantic. And they've saved them to a certain extent that the cost was tens, if close to $100 million probably over the last 30 or 40 years. So they've been expensive, but it doesn't help many other things. Captive breeding.

[Darian Woods]

In contrast to the California condor breeding program, preserving land or ocean can have multiple benefits.

[Hugh Possingham]

India is now claiming that their tiger numbers are increasing. But a lot of that is largely habitat protection. And that habitat protection is saving a lot of other mammals and birds and amphibians and reptiles.

[Waylon Wong]

In other words, you're saving two birds with one stone. When you protect jungles and grasslands, not just the target species, but all the other life in that habitat too.

[Darian Woods]

And for the islands, Hugh says there's another technique that gets you a good bang for your buck. Removing those introduced predators. In other words, poisoning, trapping or shooting pigs, rats, cats. And to ensure the solution carries on into the future, Hugh says local community buy in is is critical.

[Waylon Wong]

So let's see this in action. Darian, you promised us Tortoises to the Galapagos.

[Darian Woods]

There is a charity called Island Conservation. It ticks basically all of Hugh's boxes. It's focused, as the name suggests, on islands, and the group is mainly in the tropics. It focuses on habitats and predator removal. Penny Becker, the group's CEO, says Island Conservation was particularly concerned about a tortoise in the Galapagos called the pinzon tortoise.

[Waylon Wong]

The pinzone tortoise was becoming an aging population where they have not been able to have little hatchlings actually successfully be able to grow up on the island because of invasive species for more than 150 years.

[Darian Woods]

It was like a retirement village for tortoises.

[Waylon Wong]

Exactly. Yes. A Social Security crisis on the Galapagos. After years of planning, Island Conservation lay poisonous rat bait all around the island. Twice, actually, just to be sure. And just immediately, within one to two years, you're seeing hatchlings that are successfully growing up on the island again.

[Darian Woods]

Okay, Waylon, let's watch the video. We have to do that.

[Waylon Wong]

Oh, my gosh, I can't wait. Okay, it made this little sound and now it's like trying to crawl out of the hole. Dab yenny woo.

[Darian Woods]

That's Benny's colleague talking.

[Waylon Wong]

Oh, right. And the colleague. You're saying it's coming, it's coming. I know that we're not supposed to be just focused on what's cute, but these are so cute.

[Darian Woods]

These are both doing good and are cute. This is like the best of all possible worlds. If we are maximizing our adorableness per dollar, I think that is money well spent. And if you want to see that video, it's on our Instagram planetmoney. This episode was produced by Cooper Cats for Kim with engineering by Jimmy Keeley. It was fact checked by Sarah Juarez. Alex Goldmark edited this episode and Cake and Cannon edits the show. The indicator is a production of npr.

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