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Conservation Biology:
The scientific study of biodiversity and its
management for sustainable human welfare.
Focuses on the interaction of humans and biodiversity,
seeks to reveal the aspects of this interaction that are
significant to human interests, and strives to answer
questions about how these aspects can be managed for
sustainable human benefit.
Biodiversity: richness of the
biosphere in
genetically distinct organisms and the systems
they compose.
Do you agree?
“….to provide principles and tools for preserving
biological diversity.”
“….the new, multidisciplinary science that has
developed to deal with the crisis confronting
biological diversity.”
One interface of particular interest is with the
humanities. Environmental ethics examines
moral values relating to the natural environment.
“A thing is right when it tends
to preserve the integrity and
beauty of the biotic
community. It is wrong when
it tends otherwise.”
Aldo Leopold, 1949
The popular expression of environmental ethics is known as
environmentalism. It is a society movement “….toward
understanding humankind’s natural bases of support while
continuously applying what is learned toward perpetuating those
bases.”
Conservation biology also interfaces with many nonbiological fields.
Key goal of conservation biology: to gain scientific knowledge and apply it to the
management of biological diversity.
This implies three things:
1. How can we identify and protect the value of biodiversity.
2. How can we modify biodiversity to increase its sustainable benefits for humans.
3. How can we restore biodiversity where it has been degraded to the detriment of
human interests.
So, if biodiversity is the central concern of conservation
biology, what is biodiversity?
E.O. Wilson says that biodiversity is
our most valuable but least
appreciated resource.
In its broadest sense, biodiversity is the richness of the biosphere in genetically distinct
organims and the systems they compose. It spans a hierarchy from below the species
level to the level of the biosphere.
Two levels of particular concern:
Diversity of species.
Diversity of ecosystem types.
Every year, many species are lost. Some are large and
conspicuous. Many more are small and relatively unnoticed.
Also, many ecosystems are in danger. More than 30 ecosystems
are critically endangered in the United States alone. Fifty-eight
others are endangered, and 30 more are threatened.
Three major problems exist:
1. System of legal protection for endangered species has not proven
adequate to handle the need.
2. Management policies for public forests, rangelands and parks have
emphasized exploitation of resources, often without a sound
ecosystems basis.
3. At the international level, the strategy of protecting biodiversity by
creating strictly protected national parks does not work well in
many developing countries.
What are the functions of conservation biology?
1. Clarify the ecological and economic values of biodiversity.
2. Develop technologies to protect, restore, and manage
biodiversity.
3. Provide responsible opinion about future trends in
biodiversity and their significance to humanity.
Is conservation biology a value-laden science?
Should it be a field that promotes conservation of biodiversity based
on a set of assumed values of biodiversity, or should it be a rigorous
science that seeks to provide objective answers to questions about
how to achieve the goals of biodiversity management set by society?