Information about species’ locations can influence what happens to them—from supporting habitat protection to exposing poaching targets. Debate about releasing locations when new species are found highlights the trade-off between the risk of loss and the benefits of funding and public support. No research so far has collected data on how such decisions are made, and no decision tools easily compare a range of decision-making scenarios. Here, we present a method to compare the costs and benefits of decisions about the disclosure of information about newly discovered species and populations. We implement our method for seven species where information is completely or partially secret. We ask decision-makers to estimate the costs and benefits associated with these case studies and apply our method. Results show a range of implications from choices that are always better, to others that depend on risk attitude, and demonstrate that the process of decision-making can be transparent and easily communicated.

中文翻译：

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公布物种发现的成本和收益


有关物种位置的信息会影响它们的遭遇 - 从支持栖息地保护到揭露偷猎目标。关于在发现新物种时释放地点的争论凸显了损失风险与资金和公众支持的好处之间的权衡。到目前为止，还没有研究收集到关于如何做出此类决策的数据，也没有决策工具可以轻易比较一系列决策场景。在这里，我们提出了一种方法来比较有关新发现物种和种群信息披露的决策的成本和收益。我们对信息完全或部分保密的 7 个物种实施了我们的方法。我们要求决策者估计与这些案例研究相关的成本和收益，并应用我们的方法。结果显示了一系列影响，从总是更好的选择到其他取决于风险态度的选择，并表明决策过程可以是透明的，并且很容易沟通。