The sustainable and equitable use of living resources is now widely accepted as an important means of protecting biodiversity and hence achieving important conservation goals [e.g., the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987), the World Conservation Strategies (IUCN, 1986 and 1991), Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biological Diversity (1993)].

However, there are individuals and animal protection organizations who continue to believe that the consumptive use of wildlife, especially if such use involves commercial trade, will result in the over-exploitation and possible extinction of that species (e.g. Clark, 1991). Indeed, widespread public concern about "endangered species" in the years since the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, has resulted in many organizations being formed in industrialized nations, dedicated to "saving" various "endangered species".

Although some species featured in these campaigns might indeed give cause for legitimate conservation concern, many campaigns do not target threatened or endangered species, but rather, species having emotionally appealing characteristics. Indeed, some campaigns (e.g. to "Save the Whale" or ban seal hunting) are not based on a particular species, but rather on a readily-identifiable multi-species collectivity - be it whales, seals or kangaroos. Here most of the species targeted by such campaigns are very abundant and not at all endangered (Aron, 1988; Freeman, 1990). A common characteristic of many of these campaigns to save charismatic wildlife species is the easy recognition of the target animal group by large numbers of people, and the ease with which the animal's perceived or imagined characteristics can be anthropomorphized and rendered appealingly "special" in various ways (Freeman and Kreuter, 1994; Kalland, 1994).