Assessment of threat and conservation priorities under realistic levels of uncertainty and reliability

Abstract

Most current methods available for assessing the conservation status of a species do not take into account the underlying uncertainty inherent in the data. A point estimate approach is generally adopted to interpret the data used in these assessments. For species that are not well known, the paucity of quality data produces an unreliable estimate of the species' status. The assessment of threat, based upon a range of values reflecting the uncertainty in parameter estimates, can be undertaken within the framework of fuzzy sets and used to broaden the evaluation of a species. When the parameter estimates of two biological variables are combined, the use of fuzzy sets in conjunction with a poin..