Heather Tallis and her 239 co-signatories rightly argue that conservation science and practice would benefit from a more inclusive representation of scientists and practitioners (Nature 515, 27–28; 2014). Their call is weakened, however, because it is dominated by voices from the United States (68% of the authors). A further 10% are from Australia.

Non-English-speaking and developing regions are especially poorly represented, with just 5% of the authors coming from continental Europe and 1% from Asia; there are none from China, India, Russia, the Middle East or Japan. This is in no way representative of the global distribution of conservation need or expertise, or of the scientific literature published on conservation topics.