Core Idea
Conservation has sold us a brilliant lie wrapped in charisma and fur.
The iconic species that dominate our conservation narrative cannot, by definition, sustain the ecosystem services that sustain humanity.
A rare organism is infrequent. It cannot easily influence services by biomass or weight of numbers. Meanwhile, the common species that actually deliver clean air, fertile soil, and stable food systems disappear at rates that would trigger financial panic if they were stock portfolios.
This misdirected focus reveals conservation’s fundamental misunderstanding of biodiversity itself. We conflate rarity with importance, mistaking conservation values for ecological function.
The result is a movement that prioritises cultural comfort over biological reality, protecting symbols while the foundations crumble.
Counterpoint
The conservation establishment has convinced us that biodiversity equals rare species conservation, that saving the charismatic megafauna equals saving nature itself.
This is strategic nonsense.
Consider the arithmetic. 96% of mammalian biomass consists of humans and livestock. The remaining 4% must sustain thousands of wild mammal species. Yet our conservation resources flow overwhelmingly toward the fraction of that 4% comprising endangered icons—the polar bears, rhinos, and giant pandas that grace fundraising campaigns and children’s books.
The truth is that if every critically endangered species on the IUCN Red List went extinct tomorrow, agriculture would continue. Humans would still till soil, plant grains, and eat. Nature’s uncanny knack for persistence would ensure ecological processes continued, because the organisms that actually matter are the soil bacteria, mycorrhizal fungi, and invertebrate decomposers, and they would remain.
But lose 75% of flying insects, as Germany has in just 26 years, and you face a genuine crisis. These are the organisms that pollinate crops, control pests, and recycle nutrients. Their decline represents the erosion of ecosystem services critical to human survival.
Yet they generate no fundraising campaigns, no celebrity endorsements, no children’s plush toys.
The conservation movement’s obsession with rarity has created a perverse incentive structure in which visibility matters more than function, and emotional appeal trumps ecological importance.
Thought Challenge
Audit your own conservation assumptions… List the environmental organisations you support or admire. Examine their websites, campaigns, and fundraising materials. What percentage focuses on large mammals, birds, or other charismatic species versus soil health, pollinator populations, or microbial diversity? Count the images. How many show pandas versus earthworms?
Follow the biomass… Research any ecosystem you know well. Calculate the biomass distribution. What percentage consists of large vertebrates versus invertebrates, microorganisms, and plant matter? Then compare this to the conservation attention each group receives. Notice the inverse relationship between ecological importance and conservation funding.
Closing Reflection
The harsh mathematics of ecology care nothing for our emotional attachments. In a world where 8 billion humans require 23 trillion kilocalories daily, supported by soil organisms we cannot name and ecological processes we barely understand, our conservation priorities reveal dangerous ignorance.
Real biodiversity conservation means protecting the multitudes, not the icons. It means recognising that salvation lies not in saving the rare but in preserving the abundance of the common. The pandas can wait. The soil cannot.
Evidence Support
Dirzo, R., Young, H. S., Galetti, M., Ceballos, G., Isaac, N. J. B., & Collen, B. (2014). Defaunation in the Anthropocene. Science, 345(6195), 401-406.
TL;DR… evidence that the significant loss of animal populations globally (”defaunation”) is largely due to human land use and resource appropriation, resulting in cascading effects that disrupt ecosystem services such as seed dispersal, pollination, and pest control. The authors argue that these declines in both rare and common species rapidly erode ecological processes, highlighting the global scale and urgency of the problem.
Relevance to Insight… demonstrates the broad and well-documented consequences of biodiversity loss beyond rare species, showing how declines in everyday ecosystem participants threaten the foundations of human life through the loss of vital services, and directly supports the core sceptical argument about systemic risk rather than a singular species tragedy.
Newbold, T., Hudson, L. N., Arnell, A. P., Contu, S., De Palma, A., Ferrier, S., ... Purvis, A. (2016). Has land use pushed terrestrial biodiversity beyond the planetary boundary? A global assessment. Science, 353(6296), 288-291.
TL;DR… quantifies the loss of biodiversity due to human land conversion for agriculture and urban use, finding that many regions are well beyond “safe” planetary boundaries for maintaining ecosystem services. The authors show that common, functional groups—rather than rare species—are disproportionately impacted, threatening the resilience and productivity of natural systems.
Relevance to Insight… synthesises large-scale evidence that human land use drives widespread declines in biodiversity, which are crucial for ecosystem stability, illustrating why conservation focused only on rare species cannot resolve root causes or safeguard services essential to human survival.
Cardinale, B. J., Duffy, J. E., Gonzalez, A., Hooper, D. U., Perrings, C., Venail, P., ... Naeem, S. (2012). Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. Nature, 486, 59-67.
TL;DR… A synthesis of hundreds of experiments and meta-analyses, this review shows that biodiversity underpins core ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling, soil formation, and food production, and that reductions in common species have the most dramatic impacts on ecosystem functioning. The authors conclude that maintaining and restoring ecosystem services requires focusing on the processes and species combinations that deliver tangible benefits—not just rare or charismatic species.
Relevance to Insight… authoritative evidence that the erosion of biodiversity—especially among the species sustaining vital services—poses severe risks to human well-being, strongly supporting the contrarian stance that conservation efforts must prioritise ecosystem function over rarity.
IPBES (2019). Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
TL;DR… documents the accelerating decline of biodiversity worldwide as a result of human activities, highlighting soil, insect, and microbial diversity as foundational to food security, health, and climate regulation. It cautions against narrow conservation approaches and emphasises the need for systemic change that integrates biodiversity, ecosystem services, and land management.
Relevance to Insight… consolidates global scientific consensus that ecosystem services depend on the full spectrum of biological diversity, and that current trends threaten not just rare species but the basic support systems for human life.
Each of these papers strongly demonstrates that biodiversity loss is a systemic crisis driven by human appropriation of nature; that ecosystem services require the protection of common species and functional diversity, not just rare ones; and that only a shift to managing landscapes for enduring function, not emotional icons, will safeguard the future.