In wildfires, people prefer to save people rather than endangered species

If you were an incident controller who needed to deploy firefighting resources in a wildfire, how would you decide where to distribute those resources? If there is not enough firefighting to cover all areas at once, which areas should receive priority? Saving human lives seems like it should be a priority, but what about animal lives? What about preserving biodiversity, or saving endangered species from the fire? What about built infrastructure? What about important cultural artifacts? Some of these questions may seem easy to resolve, but there are important trade-offs, and understanding those trade-offs is important.

That is where this 2024 article by John Woinarski, Stephen Garnett, and Kerstin Zander (all Charles Darwin University), published in the journal Conservation Biology (open access, with non-technical summary on The Conversation), comes in. They surveyed a sample of over 2000 Australians, asking them to repeatedly make best-worst choices among five different alternatives (of eleven total). As they explain:

...respondents are asked to state which item among a set of items they consider as best and worst... In our survey, best meant the asset the respondent most wanted to save and worst meant the asset the respondent least wanted to save.

By getting the research participants to repeat this task many times (eleven times, in fact), with different sets of items to choose from, Woinarski et al. develop a good picture of the relative ranking of each of the eleven items, both for each research participant and for the sample overall. This best-worst scaling (BWS) method is a form of non-market valuation, since it essentially works out the relative value (in terms of ranking) of the different options that research participants are presented with. [*]

The eleven options that research participants were ranking overall were:

1. A person with a car stuck behind a fallen tree, whom you know had not received advice to evacuate;
2. A person with car stuck behind a fallen tree, whom you know had ignored repeated advice to evacuate beforehand;
3. A house that you know has no people in it;
4. A farm shed with some hay bales and a tractor;
5. A flock of 50 sheep—a few of which will be killed by fire, but survivors are likely to be badly injured;
6. A population of 50 koalas—a few of which will be killed by fire, but survivors are likely to be badly injured;
7. The last population of a native snail species for which the fire will kill all individuals, thereby causing the species’ extinction;
8. The last population of a small native shrub, for which the fire will kill all plants, thereby causing the species’ extinction;
9. One of only two populations of a rare wallaby for which the fire will kill all individuals of one of the populations (but not affect the other), thereby making it more endangered;
10. Ancient rock art that will be destroyed if fire gets into the weeds now growing in the rock shelter; and
11. An old tree with an ancient Aboriginal carving on the trunk.

The results are interesting, if not terribly surprising:

In terms of relative importance, saving a person who ignored evacuation advice was rated 57% as important as saving a person who had not received warnings... Saving the koala population was rated slightly lower (56% as important as saving a person who had not received warnings). Saving the wallaby population was 45% as important as saving a person who was not warned. Saving the house and shed had the lowest rankings (14% and 9%, respectively, as important as saving a person who was not warned).

For completeness, compared with saving a person who had not received warnings, saving the shrub was rated as 25% as important. Saving the sheep was rated as 26% as important, saving the snails was rated as 25% as important, saving the ancient rock art was rated as 15% as important, and saving the carved tree was rated 12% as important, respectively. Woinarski et al. bemoan that no one loves snails, but I also think the loss of the cultural artifacts would be a tragedy as well. I guess that reflects that each of us would place different weightings on things, and come out with different rankings. And that is what Woinarski et al. look at next, finding that:

Female respondents placed higher importance than male respondents on the protection of the rare wallaby population, the koala population, the sheep, and the tree carving and lower importance than male respondents on the protection of the house, shed, native shrub, and rock art... Older respondents (>65 years) rated protecting people more highly than younger respondents, but rated the tree carving less highly than younger respondents...

Respondents who self-identified as Indigenous placed a higher score on protecting the rock art and tree carvings than those identifying as non-Indigenous.

Those differences may not come as a surprise either. Now, in my ECONS102 class, when we discuss non-market valuation (specifically in the context of estimating the value of a statistical life), I point out that personal experience of the risk makes a difference. And that is true in this case as well. Woinarski et al. find that:

Survey respondents affected by wildfires and those assessing themselves as being prepared for wildfires were less likely to save a person who had not received warnings... Those who rated themselves as prepared for wildfire were also less likely to save a person who ignored warnings, whereas those who had been affected by wildfire were more likely to do so.

It is interesting to consider what the differences mean here. If a person has personal experience of wildfires, then they know how devastating they can be, and how unpredictable and fast-moving. In my mind, that should make them more likely to want to save a person who has not received warnings, but instead they are less likely. On the other hand, it does make sense that they would be more likely to save someone who ignored warnings. Woinarski et al. don't provide a good explanation for that result (although, to be fair, they are focused on the results related to conservation, rather than humans!). On the other hand, people who are well prepared being less willing to help those who ignored warnings makes some sense.

The takeaway message from this paper, though, is that people prefer to save people, rather than endangered species. Especially snails.

*****

[*] If one of the options had been monetary, Woinarski et al. could have used their results to work out the rough monetary value of each option.