If $10 million magically appeared and you got to decide how to allocate it between several environmental goals, how would you do it? Would you spend the money preserving open space? Cleaning up a watershed? Restoring habitat? Or a mix of these and other goals?
This thought experiment encourages you to consider tradeoffs. If funds are limited—as they always are—difficult choices between competing, laudable goals are inevitable. Who makes these choices and how can, in large part, dictate outcomes, for better or worse.
For instance, scholars have long observed that federal funding for endangered species has strongly favored charismatic megafauna, like wolves, bears, and other popular species. More obscure species—especially insects—don’t win this popularity contest. The federal government’s appetite to fund recovery efforts has always been limited, so allocating too much to one species necessarily reduces funds available for another that may need it more.
Last week, biologists working with…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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