Download Lecture 2: What is conservation biology?

Introduction to Wildlife & Fisheries Conservation
WFSC 304
Lecture 2: What is conservation biology?
This figure may help clarify the demographic
transition I described on Tuesday. Advances
in medicine and sanitation resulting from
economic capacity (and foreign aid) first
lower the death rate, increasing population
growth rate at first. The social security of
reduced death induces smaller families, and
the economic capacity provides
opportunities for education and jobs and
often increases social gender equity. So age
of first reproduction increases and birth
rates fall, leasing to stabilization or reversal
of population growth.
Minor corrections to the figure… In the first segment (leftmost on the graph), the yellow line should have slightly
positive slope because births exceed deaths (green and maroon lines). In the last segment (rightmost on the graph), the
green line should drop below the maroon line in the last segment (like in the US and Germany) and the yellow line
should have slight negative slope.
What is Conservation Biology?
To answer “what is conservation biology” we should define environmental science and
environmentalism, then contrast conservation biology and biodiversity. And we should
understand the historic development of these fields.
Defining things…
Environment –
The complex of physical, social and cultural conditions that affect biotic or abiotic entities
Environmental Science –
The systematic, scientific study of the environment as well as our role in it
—McGraw Hill web
Conservation biology –
An applied field creating solutions based in environmental science to protect biological
diversity (biodiversity)
Biodiversity –
Detail to unfold but basically biodiversity is a catch-all term for organismal diversity at multiple
levels of biological organization from genetics to communities.
Environmental science and conservation biology are critical to sustainable human economy,
health and quality of life. These fields are multidisciplinary, seeking to unite ecological
principles with other natural sciences, such as geology and chemistry, as well as social sciences
such as politics and anthropology. Environmental science is about understanding how the
environment works, and as such, it is core to conservation biology, which focuses on our
understanding of environmental science to create strategies to protect, sustain or restore
biodiversity.
The multidisciplinary nature of environmental science and conservation biology requires that
students learn subject matter well beyond their usual bounds of learning and experience. The
result should be a broad and balanced perspective that will help students understand the
depth of environmental issues, and ideally, to
see the way to environmental remedies and
sustainable practices to foster biodiversity.
Problems, remedies, enactment
For many environmental issues the difficulty is
not to formulate remedies. Typically remedies
are already well understood. The trick is to
make them socially economically and culturally
acceptable.
– Barbara Ward, economist
Classification of Perspectives
 Pragmatic/Utilitarian—concerned over resource depletion
o George Marsh, Gifford Pinchot, TR Roosevelt  US Forest Service (USFS)
o Conservation of products of use to humans
 Moral/Aesthetic—intrinsic beauty; imperative for nature to persist
o John Muir (Sierra Club), Aldo Leopold (Wilderness Society)  National Park
Service (NPS)
o Conservation of nature
 Health and Ecological—toxicology & pollution
o Rachel Carson and Silent Spring, Tyrone Hayes
o Clean environments for nature and human health
 Global Environmental Citizenship—globalization of environmental science, policies and
ecological economics
o Al Gore Inconvenient Truth, Kyoto protocol
o World Mercury Summit, etc.
All these perspectives have in common the theme of stewardship for the future
Historical development
Plato and other classical authors
understood and described environmental
problems 25 centuries ago, such as
denudation of the landscape around
Delphi. Plato’s lamentations were both
aesthetic and utilitarian.
The Greeks knew the desertification was
due to grazing and monoculture.
Other societies had similar realizations
and some small scale conservation
action, but the modern environmental
movement picked up in the mid 1800’s
in the US.
Naturalists through the ages
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Transcendentalist
“In wildness is the preservation of the world.” – Walking
“Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the
building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all
large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more
and more tame and cheap.” – Walking
“I would not have every man, or every part of a man,
cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be
tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate
use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the
vegetation it supports.” – Walking (http://www.transcendentalists.com/walking.htm)
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential
facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to
die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so
dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to
live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put
to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a
corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get
the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it
were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my
next excursion.” – Walden (see http://www.transcendentalists.com/walden.htm)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Transcendentalist, but a particularly pious, anthropocentric and egomaniacal one
"My good Henry Thoreau made this else solitary afternoon sunny with his simplicity and
clear perception. How comic is simplicity in this double-dealing, quacking world.
Everything that boy says makes merry with society, though nothing can be graver than
his meaning."
—Emerson's Journal, Feb. 17, 1838
A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form…
—Nature
Aldo Leopold, 1887-1948. (see http://www.wilderness.org/profiles/leopold.htm )
"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to
use it with love and respect."
—A Sand County Almanac
“It is a century now since Darwin gave us the first glimpse of the origin
of the species. We know now what was unknown to all the preceding
caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other
creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have
given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-ceatures; a wish to
live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.”
– A Sand County Almanac
“Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of
many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new
deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude,
and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such
a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all
other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own toomuch, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.”
– A Sand County Almanac
Where do naturalists fall in the classification on the previous page?
How about hunters? What about farmers? Etc.
Utilitarian camp
Seminal book by George Perkins Marsh (1864), Man and Nature, was
an early exposition of ecology and was influenced by his travels in the
Mediterranean and classic literature, including Plato. Marsh
(channeling Plato) argued that land clearing in the Mediterranean
created desertification: "the operation of causes set in action by man
has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete
as that of the moon." He argued that welfare is secured if man
manages resources and keeps them in good condition. Welfare of
future generations should be a resource management goal. Resource
scarcity he argued results from disrupting environmental equilibrium (channeling GE
Hutchinson). In other words environmental problems stem from unreasoned human action
rather than a cause intrinsic to the natural system.
Marsh’s writing influenced Theodore Roosevelt and TR’s Conservation Advisor, Gifford
Pinchot, and played a role in the creation of the Adirondack Park.
Resource conservation:
1. "the art of producing from the forest
whatever it can yield for the service of man"
2. "the greatest good for the greatest
number for the longest time"
—Pinchot G (1914) The Training of a Forester.
Can the two views reconcile?
Here are Pinchot’s core principles:
 Development: "the use of the natural resources now existing on this continent for the
benefit of the people who live here now. There may be just as much waste in neglecting
the development and use of certain natural resources as there is in their destruction. …
The development of our natural resources and the fullest use of them for the present
generation is the first duty of this generation."
 Conservation: "…the prevention of waste in all other directions is a simple matter of
good business. The first duty of the human race is to control the earth it lives upon."
 Protection of the public interests: "The natural resources must be developed and
preserved for the benefit of the many, and not merely for the profit of a few."
Pinchot, Gifford (1910). The Fight for Conservation.
So by 1914 it seems Pinchot developed an appreciation for sustainability and posterity.
A student of Pinchot’s was the first USFS director.
Contrast discussion: USFS v. NPS
Aesthetic camp
John Muir was very influential in US conservation. He founded
and was first president of the Sierra Club. He also advised
Roosevelt and lobbied strongly for establishing a system of
National Parks. A disciple of Muir’s was the first NPS director.
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to
everything else in the Universe."
—John Muir Papers
Health and Ecology (Environmentalism) camp
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) published the hugely influential
Silent Spring in 1962, an essay which rose awareness of
pollution and toxic chemicals. This launched modern
environmentalism, which has come to be characterized by
solid scientific foundations, political activism, and grass-roots
movements.
"Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is
inevitably a war against himself." —CBS interview, 1963
David Brower (Sierra Club, Earth Island Inst.) developed many tools of modern
environmentalism (litigation, lobbying, intervention in regularory hearings, book and calendar
publishing, mass media blitzing)
Barry Commoner (molecular biologist) – major leader in defining and stressing links between
science, technology and society.
Global citizenship phase (modern environmentalism)
Multinational summits, pacts, UN, USAID, World Bank, IUCN, IPCC, many NGOs (e.g. Gates
Foundation)
Now it is time for a (not entirely rhetorical) thought exercise / discussion:
Does the fellow on the right have and intrinsic right to exist?
The preceding sections developed environmental science and resource conservation.
What then is conservation biology in this enriched context?
Environmental Biologists—Study the interactions of different species with each other
and with their physical environment. Understanding ecosystem processes is the focus
for Environmental Biology.
Conservation Biologists—Study and design means to maintain biodiversity using
knowledge of environmental science, coupled with other forms of social and political
mechanisms. In some sense Con Bio it is a branch of Environmental Science, with an
applied goal—a mission. And why not? Understanding environmental issues and
doing nothing to protect the planet and its inhabitants is an affront to all creation.
Conservation Biology
There is a famous article entitled “What is Conservation Biology” from 1985 by Soule, and a
followup 15 years later by Kareiva (I may post one or both). Another article argues there are
so many definitions of Con Bio that there is no definition.
For purposes of being on the same page:
Conservation biology is a response by the
scientific community to the biodiversity crisis.
(Environmentalism is the public’s response)
Conservation biology merges applied and
theoretical biology and incorporates ideas and
expertise from a broad range of fields outside
the natural sciences, toward the goal of
preserving biodiversity.
Conservation biology, like
Environmental Science, represents a
synthesis of many basic sciences that
provide principles and new approaches
for the applied fields of resource
management. The text aptly expresses
this connection:
It applies principles of:
 Natural Science
 Social Science
 Policy and Governance
 Humanities (e.g. aesthetics, ethics…)
The field is becoming increasingly applied (meaning “utilitarian”; not “used”)
One attempt to put all this together is represented by a program here at TAMU:
What is Biodiversity?
The complete range of species and biological
communities as well as the genetic variation within
species and all ecosystem processes.
This includes:
 Species diversity
 Genetic diversity
 Phenotypic diversity?
 Community diversity
 Ecosystem diversity
 Both pattern and process***
Species diversity—
Big picture
Ignore numbers in the pie chart except
to contrast with the modern numbers
below, and for the proportional
representation of varied taxa
 The diversity of organisms and plentitude of species we see today have been and are
being evolved. We will explore evolution later in the course but a brief definition is
change in gene frequencies through time. This process is readily observed and happens
at a rate that has shocked us (the scientific community).
 Many processes create evolution but among the strongest driving forces is ecology and
environmental change.
 The goal of conservation biology is not to stop genetic change, nor to conserve the
status quo, but rather to ensure that populations may persist by continuing to respond
to environmental change in an adaptive manner.
 Ecological systems are not in stable equilibria. A sort of stochastic-dynamic equilibrium,
mixed with some chaos, is a better mental model. Therefore adaptability is needed by
organisms.
 Ecosystems consist of patches and mosaics of habitat types, not of uniform and clearly
categorized communities. And patches change. Again, organisms must be able to
persist by evolutionary or physiological adaptation and migration.
 Humans are and will continue to be a part of both natural and degraded ecological
systems. Their presence must be included in conservation planning.
For tomorrow I may jump the gun on developing evolution. I feel it is good to present here in
light of the present discussion. Also the concepts should be available for developing other
topics as we go.