Effect on Conservation
“The Bambi Effect” effectively allows for the romanticisation of single-species conservation and refusal to acknowledge the more complex and intricate aspects of conservation, involving whole ecosystems and every component of the community.
According to Simberloff (1998), the overregulation of a particular species, for instance, through transplanting or supplemental feeding, is contradictory to the protection of entire ecosystems, since all other components of the community are not protected or regulated as intensively. This favouritism towards the charismatic species and inequity in treatment can lead to a situation where “biodiversity conservation becomes solely animal protection, which would no longer be ecology” (Ang & Png, 2020).
“Even if we stretch the survival of charismatic threatened species, in the long run, neglecting the other less appealing wildlife and habitats they depend on will not guarantee their safety from extinction.”
— Ang & Png (2020)