[MCN] It's time to get real about wildlife conservation -- do we really need more data, more research atop what we already know?

[Lance Olsen]

“How can scientists protect biodiversity? In the wake of August’s Great Elephant Census, which revealed a precipitous decline in numbers throughout Africa, there were the usual calls from researchers for more and better data. Only if we know where and how many of each species there are, this argument goes, can we hope to conserve them. 

"This is nonsense.

“Better data will not save elephants, rhinos or any other species. An enormous number of individuals, academic institutions, local, state and national governments, and multinational and non-governmental organizations have been collecting, assimilating and organizing such data for decades, essentially fiddling while our biological heritage burns.”

Aaron M. Ellison. It’s time to get real about conservation. Nature  13 OCTOBER 2016

https://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.20773!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/538141a.pdf <https://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.20773!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/538141a.pdf>


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Michael Schlesinger, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign, points to another example.
“Things are happening right now with the ice sheets that were not predicted to happen until 2100,” Schlesinger says.
 
“My worry is that we may have passed the window of opportunity where learning is still useful.”
 
John Bohannan, Trying to Lasso Climate Uncertainty, Science October 13, 2006
DOI: 10.1126/science.314.5797.243
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