Species or processes?

Research spotlight By Georgia Randall

Historically, biodiversity conservation has focused on protecting emblematic species and preventing extinctions. While necessary, this approach may not be the most efficient or holistic strategy for addressing biodiversity loss. As discussed in previous editions, there is growing awareness of the complex and critical roles that all ecosystem components, living and non-living, play in creating balanced, healthy environments. Conservationists are increasingly turning toward projects that prioritise ecological processes rather than individual species or habitats, a shift recently reviewed by Tobias et al. (2025).

Global challenges including food insecurity, disease emergence, and extreme weather events are increasingly linked to climate change and ecosystem degradation. The resilience of environments, whether agricultural, urban, or wild, has become imperative for civilisation's persistence. Ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, air filtration, and nutrient cycling form the foundation for all life, facilitated by organisms ranging from soil microbes to apex predators.

Yet conservation programs have rarely targeted these underlying processes, instead directing funding toward saving the rarest or most charismatic species.

This species-centric approach, while achieving some successes in preventing extinctions, may ultimately lead to a "Noah's Ark" scenario where small, fragmented populations survive in isolation, contributing little to ecological processes and having disappeared from most of their historical distribution. The ongoing rapid decline in biodiversity, with human actions causing at least a 50-70% decline in global wildlife populations since 1970, suggests that current “fire-fighting” strategies may be insufficient for preserving functional ecosystems.

Process-based conservation offers a complementary approach that emphasises genetic diversity, ecological interactions, and landscape connectivity. By focusing on the processes that drive healthy ecosystems, this strategy can establish cumulative, multi-beneficial influences across entire landscapes, potentially offering more sustainable long- term outcomes than species-focused efforts alone.

The primary challenge in implementing process-based conservation lies in translating complex ecological concepts into actionable metrics that land managers, scientists, and policymakers can understand and apply. Current indices such as "functional diversity" are too complex and still don't capture how everything in nature is connected. Without clear metrics, conservation efforts remain scattered and poorly coordinated. This is why research into specific ecosystem roles, like understanding how digging animals improve soil health and carbon storage, is so important. By studying these concrete connections between animals and environmental benefits, we can develop practical measures that help align conservation efforts with the goal of building resilient ecosystems.

To read the full paper, click here.