Endangered Species and the Safe Minimum Standard

Abstract The safe minimum standard of conservation is a decision rule for problems like endangered species preservation that involve irreversibility and uncertainty. It has been motivated as the minimax‐loss solution to a two‐person game against nature. However, two equally plausible games can be used to model decisions involving endangered species. For one game, the safe minimum standard, and therefore preservation, is preferred. For the other game, extinction is preferred. Although the safe minimum standard is intuitively appealing, it cannot be motivated by game theory.