Goodhart's Law in the environment

Nature Talk
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I had never heard of Goodhart’s Law. It has just been mentioned on the forum in an entirely different context but it crops up in wildlife conservation. A couple of examples:

The UK government decided to use a suite of passerine birds as indicators of the health of the farmed countryside. So then there was incentive to help these birds in particular, such as by putting out seed to feed them through the winter, in order that the government could claim their environmental polices were working. Though most of them are still declining so the ruse didn’t work.

I’m less sure about where the second example took place, USA or Canada I think. Probably someone on the forum will be able to fill in the details. It was decided salmon populations would make a good indicator of stream health in forest catchments. So the streams were electro-fished and other fish species were removed in order to prevent competition with the salmon.

Does anyone have any more examples of Goodhart’s Law in conservation?

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Goodhart’s law is an adage that, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”

It is named after British economist Charles Goodhart (born in 1936; still alive today at 89 years old)

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We currently have a global push that puts methane and CO₂ above all else. Kind of greenwashing, especially in agribusiness. Anything that reduces methane and CO₂ is branded as “good”, and anything that increases methane and CO₂ is branded as “bad”, with no other context.

Before someone flags this comment as off-topic or it gets hidden by moderators, I do think this is relevant to this nature talk category, as this approach affects conservation programs worldwide, including ocean conservation. This has huge global impacts, because oceans are about 70% of the earth’s surface.

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Animals are “bad“, then, and we must destroy them!