We did not attempt to measure Island Conservation’s overall cost

effectiveness. An earlier analysis of their work in Mexico measured a cost of 2008). The average cost for all of Island Conservation’s accomplishments is likely higher due to the relatively high costs of conducting conservation actions in the US and the startup costs of developing programs in new regions outside of Mexico and California. However, average long-term costs in other parts of the world may be of the same order of magnitude as those for Mexico because it is a middle-income country with relatively high levels of insular biodiversity (Atkinson and Brandolin 2010; Myers et al. 2000). Islands this website are particularly effective habitats in which to prevent extinction. They have an 8–9 fold higher concentration of unique species than continental regions (Kier et al. 2009), more than half of all IUCN-listed extinctions have occurred on islands (Aguirre-Munoz et al. 2008) and the leading cause of extinctions on islands, selleck products invasive species, is a problem that can often be solved using existing eradication techniques (Clavero and Garcia-Berthou 2005). Many, if not most, island invasive species eradications have been conducted by government island management agencies on a case-by-case basis. Although this process has resulted in numerous successes, it may be less efficient

than the more systematic approach taken by organizations that specialize in prioritizing,

designing and implementing eradications. Island Conservation’s Phospholipase D1 accomplishments and impacts suggest that other organizations specializing in eradicating invasive species from islands can further stem the loss of biodiversity on the world’s ~185,000 marine islands. In particular, new regionally focused eradication organizations (either stand alone or branches of a larger organization like Island Conservation) encompassing the 136 countries with marine islands could significantly decrease global extinction rates. EPZ015938 nmr Acknowledgment We would like to thank Island Conservation for making their data and other records available. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. References Aguirre-Munoz A, Croll DA, Donlan CJ, Henry RW, Hermosillo MA, Howald GR, Keitt BS, Luna-Mendoza L, Rodriguez-Malagon M, Salas-Flores LM, Samaniego-Herrera A, Sanchez-Pacheco JA, Sheppard J, Tershy BR, Toro-Benito J, Wolf S, Wood B (2008) High-impact conservation: invasive mammal eradications from the islands of western Mexico. Ambio 37:101–107PubMedCrossRef Ali R (2004) The effect of introduced herbivores on vegetation in the Andaman Islands.