Two weeks ago, I wrote about scientists who intentionally killed 80,000 feral goats on one of the islands in the Galápagos archipelago. The effort was in the name of biodiversity and conservation, sure, but was it right? The post spurred some fascinating questions and comments, particularly from Jason G. Goldman, who writes The Thoughtful Animal blog at the Scientific American Blog Network. I put Jason in touch with LWONian Michelle Nijhuis, who just wrote a feature for Scientific American about how conservationists decide which species to save. Below you’ll find their conversation.

So one of the questions we might ask is whether we can reasonably infer the short-range consequences of a species management decision, but