Irrational preferences for rare products are likely to drive the few remaining caviar sturgeon in the Caspian Sea to extinction, warn biologists in France.

Even before tasting, 57% of people at the luxury receptions expressed a preference for the “rare” caviar, while none preferred the “common” alternative, Courchamp told a meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on 14 July.

After they had tasted the two identical samples, 70% of the experienced consumers said the preferred the “rare” sample.
Elitist tastes

It was the same story in the supermarkets, with 52% preferring the “rare” caviar before tasting it, and 74% expressing the same preference after they had done so.

“It’s very scary,” says fisheries scientist Ellen Pikitch of the Pew Institute for Ocean Science in New York.

The fact that people who are not yet in the champagne-and-caviar set have the same predilection as established consumers means that threats to sturgeon will only grow with rising prosperity. “The expanding economy of China is going to put hundreds of thousands of people in reach of these kinds of luxury products,” Courchamp notes.

He argues that similar preferences for the rare can drive an “extinction vortex” in many circumstances – for example, when trophy hunters selectively target endangered animals.

Last chance

In the case of caviar, it means that the availability of farmed products may do little to protect sturgeon from extinction in the absence of a total ban on trading wild-caught caviar.

So cause people have a preference for things deemed “luxury” endangered species may go extinct.

Source: Sturgeon swimming towards ‘extinction vortex’