The struggle to preserve the world's biodiversity is being compromised by fatal flaws in the way conservationists draw up their lists of endangered species. An Australian botanist warns that the lists reflect the plants and animals that scientists are most interested in studying, rather than the most threatened species or those at risk of extinction. For instance, says Mark Burgman of the University of Melbourne, lists compiled and used by organisations such as the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the Secretariat to the CITES agreement are heavily biased toward birds, mammals and flowering plants, to the detriment of less charismatic species such as insects and fungi. If no one tackles the problem, Burgman believes we will unwittingly focus our conservation efforts in the wrong places, and fail to stop the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs.
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