Research overview: conservation triage and resource allocation

With far more conservation need than funding, the controversial idea of conservation triage proposes deciding where to invest based on cost, feasibility, and likely return, potentially accepting that some species or populations cannot be saved. This overview surveys research on triage as applied to big cats and large carnivores, examining frameworks for prioritizing among populations, sites, and species. Studies analyze how to allocate limited resources to maximize conservation outcomes, and the ethical and practical debates this provokes, including fears that triage rationalizes abandonment. Researchers contrast triage with the imperative to save all species and explore how prioritization can be made transparent and defensible. The overview frames triage as a difficult but increasingly unavoidable consideration given the scale of the carnivore crisis and finite budgets. It matters because explicit, evidence-based prioritization, however uncomfortable, may achieve more for big cats overall than spreading scarce resources too thinly to be effective anywhere.