Dave Harmon, PW editor
Butterfly study at Poland’s Narew NP shows some small, isolated populations can survive just fine
When a population of any species gets too small and isolated, it may find itself at much greater risk of dying out. As a result, these tiny populations — which are often fatalistically called “the living dead” — sometimes don’t get prioritized for conservation.
That could be the wrong approach. A new paper points out that these small populations could actually be quite viable on their own and are still worthy of protection.