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“If that comes at an economic cost, and people can use the excuse that they’re doomed anyway, that’s bound to be a hurdle to action.” Switching gears “All conservation is about changing human behavior,” she adds. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one of the authors, “because it gives scientists new tools to ask whether this species is really doomed to extinction because of genetics, or whether we should be worrying about other things.” “It’s a really exciting study,” says Barbara Taylor of the U.S.

That part of the story is unfortunately less encouraging. But preventing more vaquitas from dying is urgent. Using a model to explore how likely the population is to survive under different conditions, the researchers show that in scenarios where no more vaquitas die in nets, there is only a six percent chance they would go extinct. A study published May 5 in the journal Science contains some positive news, however: It suggests that the species’ genetic diversity has long been quite low, and that vaquitas may therefore be less vulnerable to inbreeding than many other species.

With so few vaquitas remaining, many researchers worry that the population may not be able to recover genetically, even if gillnet fishing-which is illegal in the area where vaquitas still occur-stops. These finely-woven, massive nets are used to catch shrimp and fish, but too often entangle vaquitas as well. Related to harbor porpoises, the mammals measure about five feet in length, small enough to be threatened by fishers using gillnets in the north of Mexico’s Gulf of California, the only place in the world where they occur. Vaquitas are among the most endangered animals on the planet, with only 10 individuals left alive.

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