Decision theory provides guidance on how to efficiently allocate limited conservation resources to maximize species recovery. However, implementing the theory can be challenging. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is responsible for overseeing US Endangered Species Act recovery. Limited appropriated resources for recovery mean that a structured approach to prioritizing conservation resource allocation could increase recovery outcomes for FWS, but development of such a framework faces hurdles due to perceptions of institutional and problem complexity. We identified and navigated some of these hurdles as we spent two years co-developing a prototype resource allocation tool to help FWS managers understand trade-offs in endangered species recovery funding.
Results/Conclusions
Our co-development of a decision theory based resource allocation tool depended on identifying and navigating stakeholder hurdles to process acceptance and feasibility. Here we categorize and discuss these hurdles as the perceptions that: 1) scarce resources should be spent on implementation, not decision support; 2) prioritization is only useful for simple decisions; 3) structured decision support is a black-box; 4) available data are not good enough to support decisions; and 5) prioritization means giving up on some goals. We suggest that identifying and working through these hurdles provided better institutional buy-in with tool development and that considering these hurdles to implementation is relevant to any agency considering quantitative decision support for conservation resource allocation.