Micheal Belitz, a researcher at the Zipkin lab at MSU has proposed a new focus for conservation efforts. While Belitz has worked in the traditional conservation framework of trying to preserve a specific species, he proposes that conservation efforts need to have broader goals of preserving groups of species in a habitat which he calls ‘assemblage-level conservation’. This approach involves high-level modelling of ecosystem interactions to understand the mechanisms of biodiversity loss among a group. This level of conservation is possible because of the availability of plentiful data and modeling technologies. This idea is deeply involved in the conversations we have had about how biodiversity funding tends to be distributed and offers a solution to the problem of species ‘favoritism’ that we talked about. Instead of focusing on one species that is able to get our attention, it allows us to try to conserve all the species in its taxonomic group. While it might not be as good at saving individual rare endangered species, it might offer a better chance at preserving biodiversity overall because of its breadth. I think this approach is an exciting idea, not just because of its efficiency in targeting many species in one effort, but also because it addresses the moral dilemma of how we can justify allocating funding to save one species over another. By focusing on a whole taxonomical group, we might also be able to better justify the economic, environmental and aesthetic benefits of conservation. In conjunction with ecosystem-level conservation, it could be our best chance at catching up conservation efforts to the scale of damage that human intervention has caused.