Research overview: return on investment in carnivore conservation

Conservation funding is limited, prompting research into how to maximize the return on investment, achieving the greatest conservation benefit per dollar spent on big cats and other carnivores. This overview surveys studies that combine the costs of conservation actions with their expected benefits to compare and rank investments across species, sites, and strategies. Researchers analyze where spending is most cost-effective, how to account for feasibility and the probability of success, and how economic framing can sharpen prioritization decisions. The overview also considers critiques, including the difficulty of quantifying benefits and the risk of neglecting hard-to-value or expensive species. It frames return-on-investment analysis as a tool for making prioritization explicit and efficient, complementing ecological and ethical considerations. It matters because, faced with a global carnivore crisis and finite resources, directing funds where they yield the most conservation gain can substantially increase the total impact achievable for the world's big cats.