In “When to stop managing or surveying cryptic species,” Chades et al. present decision making tools for managers concerned with what conservation action to take. How long should you spend time, money and effort managing a species that might not even be there? Long story short managing is the best approach if it’s a high value species, but if management continues without any sign of a population, it’s worth switching your resources to surveying. If nothing shows up, move on. But before you do any of that, be sure to use a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process to know when those benchmarks occur.

Chades, I. et al. When to stop managing or surveying cryptic threatened species. PNAS, in press. (doi: 10.1073/pnas.080526510)