INTRODUCTION

When considering targets in conservation biology, we are likely to first think of the recent literature on setting of ecosystem-level targets. The development of “systematic conservation planning” (Margules and Pressey 2000) has greatly facilitated the ability of conservation bodies to make objective decisions in development of reserve networks. At an even broader scale, research has been conducted to assess the proportion of the Earth's land surface that needs to be protected to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem function (e.g. Svancara et al. 2005), potentially allowing decision-makers to move beyond the traditional rule-of-thumb of converting 10% of the Earth's land surface into protected areas (IUCN 1993). However, population-level conservation targets have a much longer history, given that traditional management of wildlife, fisheries, and forests has involved regulating harvests from populations in order to achieve maximum sustainable yields (Holt and Talbot 1978). Although species recovery is a more recently developed field, the process of setting and meeting targets is not fundamentally different from that of traditional wildlife management. The primary goal in both cases is to manage human activity to allow species and populations to persist, regardless of whether those species are valued for utilitarian or other reasons.

There is often tension between goals of ecosystem and species-level conservation, with people sometimes having diametrically opposing views on how research effort and resources should be allocated.