Conservation Biology

1
Conservation Biology

• A Historical Perspective
• 
  Lecture 2

2
American Conservation efforts can be traced to
three philosophical movements

• 2 of the 19th century
• 1 of the 20th century

3
Romantic-Transcendental Conservation Ethic

• Derived from the writings of Emerson, Thoreau and
  Muir
• Nature has uses other than human economic gain,
  specifically they spoke of nature in a
  quasi-religious sense

4
Resource Conservation Ethic

• Made popular by the forester Gifford Pinchot
• Based on utiliarian philosophy
• Once stated that the first great fact about
  conservation is that it stands for development
• Stressed equity a fair distribution of resources

5
Evolutionary-Ecological Land Ethic

• Developed by Aldo Leopold in his classic essays
  e.g., A Sand County Almanac
• Nature was not a simple collection of independent
  parts but a complicated and integrated system of
  interdependent processes and components

6
How Leopolds approach transformed American
Conservation

• Wildlife included non-game vertebrates as well as
  invertebrates and plants.
• Emphasis on the provision of suitable habitat.
• Ecology became the cornerstone of wildlife
  management.
• A national system of financial and institutional
  support of wildlife research.

7
How Leopolds approach transformed American
Conservation

• 5. A text, journal and society devoted to
  conservation.
• 6. Ecology as a fusion point for all the natural
  sciences.

8
Hardening of the Categories

• By the end of the 1950s academic ecology and
  applied wildlife management began to go down
  somewhat different paths, dissolving the close
  association of previous decades
• In short the glue that first allowed wildlife
  management to come together and stick together
  was allowed to brake down

9
The quickening pace of environmental degradation
and biological impoverishment in the 1960s and
1970s would outstrip the ability of the various
conservation related sciences, acting in
isolation to respond
10
Wildlife management as practiced seemed less and
less responsive or relevant

• The newly energized environmental movement sought
  to confront these trends through ambitious
  conferences, management programs, and legislative
  initiatives at the national and international
  levels

11
More than that weve in many senses had, and do
have, to return to the views of Leopold

• The profession of wildlife management has had to
  rethink its priorities, broaden its mission, and
  reintegrate itself
• - this process has gone on under the name of
  Conservation Biology