The costs and benefits of publicising species discoveries

Abstract

Information about species’ locations can influence what happens to them—from supporting habitat protection to exposing poaching targets. Debate about releasing locations when new species are found highlights the trade-off between the risk of loss and the benefits of funding and public support. No research so far has collected data on how such decisions are made, and no decision tools easily compare a range of decision-making scenarios. Here, we present a method to compare the costs and benefits of decisions about the disclosure of information about newly discovered species and populations. We implement our method for seven species where information is completely or partially secret. We ask d..