"Beetles Do Not Hold Press Conferences"

In 1987, biologists caught the last free-flying California condors and the species was declared extinct in the wild ^[1]. Today more than 300 are back in their natural environment, the result of decades of coordinated work and millions of dollars ^[1].

That is a triumph of science, and it is also being offered this week as an argument about power. Shannon Gibson and David Ginsburg, environmental studies researchers at the University of Southern California, argue in a commentary that the condor's recovery shows why decisions about which species to save cannot be left to distant experts alone ^[1].

I think they are right about the question and too generous to the condor as evidence. The record they present does not show that local people steered the recovery, or that giving them a say caused its success. What it shows is better for the argument: saving the condor was a quarrel about land, lead and money, and the quarrel never stopped. A global conservation effort that pretends otherwise will hit the same quarrel with no one prepared for it.

Not a new treaty

The timing matters, and so does the correction. The Convention on Biological Diversity is holding its 17th conference of the parties, COP17, in Yerevan, Armenia, from October 19 to 30, 2026 ^[2]. Nations are not writing a new treaty there. They are arguing over how to carry out the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which countries adopted in 2022 ^[1].

That framework sets targets rather than picking winners. It aims to raise US$200 billion a year from public and private sources by 2030, to conserve and manage at least 30% of land, coastal areas and oceans, and to prevent human-caused extinctions. It does not name which individual species get protected, but it shapes national priorities and where conservation money goes ^[1].

Two decisions in Yerevan bear on the researchers' question. A permanent advisory body for Indigenous peoples and local communities was created at the 2024 talks, and delegates are expected to decide how it will work, including whether it gets a formal role in decisions. They are also to consider guidance on applying the 30% target in Indigenous territories ^[1].

A rescue that looked like surrender

Start with what the condor story does establish. Conservationists fought over whether capturing every remaining wild bird was a rescue or a surrender. Critics questioned the expense. Rural communities in Utah and Arizona raised concerns about federal land-use restrictions, and hunting groups including the NRA opposed lead-ammunition bans, even though lead ammunition is identified as a leading cause of condor deaths ^[1].

None of that is a footnote. The thing that was killing the birds was something people used, for reasons that made sense to them, on land where they lived. No captive-breeding programme, however well funded, removes that.

The condor also matters to the Yurok Tribe of California, for cultural and spiritual reasons ^[1]. The researchers do not document what the Tribe did in particular recovery decisions, and I will not invent it. Who sat at which table in the 1980s and after is a question for records and participants, and it is a good one for a historian to chase. But the fact that a species can be sacred to one people and a nuisance to another, within a single rescue, is the whole problem in miniature.

The best case for the experts

The strongest answer to the researchers is simple. Biologists caught the birds, bred them and released them. A committee of the affected would have been slower, and extinction is not patient. Nobody on the ground in Utah voted the condor back into existence.

That is fair, and I grant it. Expertise did the rescuing. But the same record shows expertise running into land rules and ammunition politics it could not settle by itself, and a recovery that took decades, not seasons. A rescue is quick. Living alongside what you rescued is the long part, and the people who live alongside it are the ones who decide whether it lasts.

The researchers' other examples make the point harder. They describe European wolf recovery bringing livestock losses to farmers, and Maasai resistance to displacement in Tanzania's Ngorongoro Conservation Area. They say two presidential commissions recommended in March 2026 that evictions there continue, in a process with few Maasai in it, citing advocates at the Oakland Institute ^[1].

Those are the researchers' accounts, and the Tanzanian case in particular is contested ground. They describe the cost of conservation falling on the people least consulted about it.

Who gets counted

There is a second kind of choice hiding in the first. The researchers cite a 2025 study of more than 14,000 species-focused conservation projects from 1992 to 2016. By their account, five mammal groups received 86% of available funding, while plants and invertebrates received 6.6% ^[1]. I have not seen the study, so those figures are theirs.

If they hold, the pattern is clear enough. Species are saved in proportion to how much people already love them, and the beloved are mostly furry. The condor itself is no mammal, but it is an enormous, strange, instantly recognisable bird, and it has had its decades of attention. Beetles do not hold press conferences.

The money behind these choices is another gap. The framework's target is US$200 billion a year by 2030. The researchers report that conservation economists and groups at the Paulson Institute estimate an additional US$1.3 trillion a year is needed for conservation and restoration ^[1]. That too is their report of the estimate. Someone will decide which species and which places share whatever money does arrive, and who gets to be in the room when they do is no side issue.

The room and the lawn

The Convention itself draws the line in how it built COP17. It divides the conference into a Blue Zone, where the parties negotiate formal decisions, and a Green Zone, meant for wider public engagement, knowledge sharing and partnership-building ^[2].

Being welcome on the lawn is not the same as having a seat at the table. A community can attend, exchange ideas and be photographed, and still have no say in the text governments adopt. That is why the advisory body's formal role matters more than any speech about inclusion. A body that can only advise can be thanked and ignored. A body with a formal role in decisions is a different thing, and governments know the difference.

The same goes for the 30% target. Setting aside a third of the planet's land and sea sounds like pure good news until you ask whose homes and livelihoods sit inside the lines. The researchers press the point that the target can touch people whose rights overlap with conservation areas ^[1]. Guidance on how it applies in Indigenous territories will tell us whether the framework treats those people as partners or as obstacles with addresses.

What to watch

Two texts will answer the question the condor raises. One is the final decision on how the advisory body operates, and in particular whether the words "formal decision-making role" survive negotiation. The other is the guidance on the 30% target in Indigenous territories. Weak wording on either would tell you that participation, at this treaty, remains a courtesy.

The condor was caught in 1987 by people who were still arguing about whether they should. Thirty-nine years on, the argument has not ended, and the bird is flying anyway. That is the lesson I would take to Yerevan: do not wait for agreement before you act, but do not mistake the absence of agreement for the absence of the people who will have to live with the result.