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Cover description: The mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei), used to raise funding and awareness for biodiversity in its home in central Africa, is a model example of a fl agship species. By drawing on the public appeal of species such as gorillas, tigers and pandas, conservation agencies have successfully established protected area networks, and generate funding and support for biodiversity conservation throughout the world. Although undeniably a useful strategy, this approach can sometimes fail to provide protection or adequately recover many other highly threatened species, especially those that require specialized management regimes. In a new approach developed by Liana Joseph and her colleagues, the notion of securing from extinction large numbers of species (instead of a single fl agship) is used as to raise funding and awareness for the recovery of endangered species. This approach is proposed as a complementary tool to the fl agshipspecies approach. It can be particularly useful for securing endangered species that will never be effective fl agship species and will not be adequately recovered by the actions established because of the appeal of other fl agships. Photograph taken by Liana Joseph.