Environmental crises, such as wildfires, can cause major losses of human life, infrastructure, biodiversity, and cultural values. In many such situations, incident controllers must make fateful choices about what to protect—and hence what to abandon. With an online representative survey of >2000 adult Australians, we investigated social attitudes to this dilemma. We used best–worst scaling to assess preferences across a set of 11 assets representing human life, infrastructure, biodiversity, and cultural values. Survey respondents overwhelmingly prioritized a single human life (best–worst score of 6647 out of possible score ranging from −10695 to 10695), even if that choice resulted in extinction of other species. Inanimate (replaceable) objects were accorded lowest priority (best–worst scores of −4655 for a shed and −3242 for a house). Among biodiversity assets, respondents prioritized protecting a population of the iconic koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) (best–worst score of 1913) ahead of preventing the extinction of a snail (score −329) and a plant species (−226). These results variably support current policy in that they emphasize the importance the community places on protection of human life, but results diverged from conventional practice in rating some biodiversity assets ahead of infrastructure. The preference for protecting a population of koalas ahead of action taken to prevent the extinction of an invertebrate and plant species corroborates previous research reporting biases in the way people value nature. If noncharismatic species are not to be treated as expendable, then the case for preventing their extinction needs to be better made to the community. Given the increasing global incidence of high-severity wildfires, further sampling of societal preferences among diverse asset types is needed to inform planning, policy, and practice relating to wildfire. Other preemptive targeted management actions (such as translocations) are needed to conserve biodiversity, especially noniconic species, likely to be imperiled by catastrophic events.

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相对于受野火威胁的其他类型资产的生物多样性社会评价

野火等环境危机可能造成人类生命、基础设施、生物多样性和文化价值的重大损失。在许多此类情况下，事件控制者必须就要保护什么以及放弃什么做出重大选择。通过对超过 2000 名澳大利亚成年人进行在线代表性调查，我们调查了社会对这一困境的态度。我们使用最佳-最差衡量标准来评估代表人类生活、基础设施、生物多样性和文化价值的 11 项资产的偏好。调查受访者绝大多数优先考虑单一人类生命（最佳与最差得分为 6647，可能得分范围为 -10695 至 10695），即使这种选择会导致其他物种灭绝。无生命（可替换）的物体被赋予最低优先级（棚屋的最佳-最差分数为-4655，房屋的最佳-最差分数为-3242）。在生物多样性资产中，受访者优先考虑保护标志性考拉 ( Phascolarctos cinereus ) 种群（1913 年最好-最差分数），然后再防止蜗牛（分数 -329）和植物物种（-226）灭绝。这些结果不同程度地支持了当前的政策，因为它们强调了社区对保护人类生命的重视，但结果与在基础设施之前对某些生物多样性资产进行评级的传统做法不同。在采取行动防止无脊椎动物和植物物种灭绝之前优先保护考拉种群，证实了之前的研究报告在人们珍视自然的方式上存在偏见。如果不将无魅力的物种视为消耗品，那么就需要更好地向社区宣传防止其灭绝的理由。鉴于全球高强度野火发生率不断增加，需要对不同资产类型的社会偏好进行进一步抽样，以便为与野火相关的规划、政策和实践提供信息。需要采取其他先发制人的有针对性的管理行动（例如易地）来保护生物多样性，特别是可能受到灾难性事件威胁的非标志性物种。