Thread by @megcevans

🚨New paper! 🚨 We developed an approach to ensure #biodiversityoffsets that rely on protection of existing habitat 🌳 don't unintentionally worsen biodiversity loss 📉 Here's how 👉

I think we all know what #biodiversityoffsets are - but if not - check out the first 2 mins of this neat video created by @ZoeStoneNZ @martine_maron

Protecting *existing* habitat is the most common way of delivering a #biodiversityoffset
Who wouldn't want to protect a beautiful piece of habitat like this?

But an offset needs to compensate for #biodiversity loss elsewhere. So the only way *existing* habitat 🌳 can compensate for a loss 📉, is if that habitat will be destroyed sometime in the future

Given that #biodiversity loss is a global problem, this is a reasonable assumption. BUT our research has shown that we (humans) often *overestimate* the rate of future #biodiversity loss when making decisions about offsets 👉
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

A big reason for this is the "loss aversion" cognitive bias - humans tend to prefer avoiding a loss over gaining an equivalent amount
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aver…
For e.g, which of these Brigalow patches would you prefer as a #biodiversityoffset 🤔🤔

In some cases, we might be better off *restoring* a low quality piece of habitat than protecting existing, high quality habitat, even though it feels counterintuitive!

I hope you can see how some guidance could be useful, which is what out paper delivers 😎 You can read more about it in the paper 📃 above ☝️ or in the @OryxTheJournal blog 👇
oryxthejournal.org/blog/how-to-de…

Haha amazing, forgot to link to the paper 🤦 Here it is 👉
cambridge.org/core/journals/…
Bonus figure!