Behavior and conservation: a bridge too far?

Abstract

Formal efforts to connect animal behavior and behavioral ecology to conservation biology and management began ten years ago, time enough to assess their impact on stopping species decline and extinction. After outlining the rationale for applying behavior to conservation, and the links that were originally proposed between them, I argue that theoretical advances in our understanding of behavior have made little practical contribution to conserving animal populations over the past decade. More optimistically, descriptive behavioral information has sometimes augmented solutions to specific conservation problems. I suggest several ways in which behavioral studies and researchers themselves could be more useful for conservation. Such changes will be necessary if the contribution of behavior to conservation is to move from intellectual wishful thinking to practical solutions for reversing the decline of small populations.