Conservation

In the physical sciences, the term conservation is the observation that certain quantities (i.e., mass, momentum) are preserved regardless of physical processes or transformations: see conservation law for this topic. This article is about the conservation ethic.

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Conservation is an ethic of resource use, allocation, exploitation, and protection. Its primary focus is upon maintaining the health of the natural world: its forests, fisheries[?], habitats, and biological diversity.

The consumer conservation ethic is best expressed by the four R's:

• Reduce
• Recycle
• Reuse
• Rethink

The social ethic primarily relates to the sustained and efficient use of renewable resources, the moderation of destructive use of finite resources, and the prevention of harm to common resources such as air and water[?] quality, the natural functions of a living earth, and cultural values in a built environment.

The principal value underlying most expressions of the conservation ethic is that the natural world has intrinsic and intangible worth along with utilitarian value. These might be termed the Romantic schools of conservation. More Utilitarian schools of conservation seek a proper valuation of local and global impacts of human activity upon nature in their effect upon human well being, now and to our posterity. How such values are assessed and exchanged among people determines the social, political, and personal restraints and imperatives by which conservation is practiced.

In the United States of America, the year 1864 saw the publication of two books which laid the foundation for Romantic and Utilitarian conservation traditions in America. The posthumous publication of Henry David Thoreau's Maine Woods established the grandeur of unspoiled nature as a citadel to nourish the spirit of man. From George Perkins Marsh[?] a very different book, Man and Nature, later subtitled "The Earth as Modified by Human Nature", cataloged his observations of man exhausting and altering the land from which his sustainance derives.

here introduce specific concerns like supporting populations, global warming, biodiversity, the value of wilderness, fish and timber harvest, etc,etc.

In common usage, the term refers to the activity of systematically protecting natural resources such as forests, including biological diversity. Carl F. Jordan[?] defines the term in his book Replacing Quantity With Quality As a Goal for Global Management

"biological conservation as being a philosophy of managing the environment in a manner that does not despoil, exhaust or extinguish."

While that usage is not new, the idea of biological conservation has been applied to the principles of ecology, biogeography, anthropology, economy and sociology to maintain biodiversity.

Even the term "conservation" may cover the concepts such as cultural diversity, genetic diversity[?] and the concept of movements environmental conservation[?], seedbank (preservation of seeds).

The recent movement in conservation can be considered a resistance to commercialism[?], globalization. Slow food is an instance.

Table of contents 1 History of biological conservation 1.1 Romantic-Transcendental 1.2 Resource Conservation 1.3 Evolutionary-Ecological 2 References

History of biological conservation

The origins of biological conservation can be traced to philosophical and religious beliefs connecting Man with Nature. Taoist and Shintoist philosophies encourage recognition of special sites, allowing spiritual experiments.
Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism, grant a sacred value to animals. Primitive religions also recognize sacred values to sites such as forests, lakes, mountains...

There are three main philosophical movements

Romantic-Transcendental

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, in 1880, defend the idea that Nature has a meaning, beyond economic profits. Nature is a temple where the Man can share and communicate with God.
John Muir defends a preservationist ethic, according to which the beauty of Nature stimulates the religious feelings and supports spiritual experiments. He also sees in biological communities, groups of species evolving together and depending ones on the others. These communities, superorganisms, are a prelude to the Gaia hypothesis developed later by James Lovelock (1988).

Resource Conservation

Gifford Pinchot, at the beginning of the XX century, develops an ethics of resources conservation, which is based on an utilitarian philosophy. According to him, Nature is a set of things defined by their utility or their harmful character. He defends the sharing of resources between all users, current and future (a first approach to sustainable development) by avoiding despoiling. However, he does not take into account the costs of degradation and pollution of the environnement nor the erosion of resources.

Evolutionary-Ecological

With Aldo Leopold (A Sand County Almanac, 1959), an evolutionary ecology develops, a prospect marked by dynamism rather than by static conservation. In his famous chapter Land Ethics, Leopold states A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

See also:

diversity, biodiversity, cultural diversity

Conservation ecology

ex-situ conservation

List of Conservation topics and Protected area

Global 200 (200 ecoregions defined by WWF as the most critical regions for conservation)

environmental movement

globalization

International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

References

• Conservation: Replacing Quantity With Quality As a Goal for Global Management by Carl F. Jordan-John Wiley & Sons - ISBN 0471595152 - (January 1995)
• Conservation Biology : an evolutionary ecological perspective (Soulé et Wilcox, 1980)
• Conservation and evolution (Frankel et Soulé, 1981)
• Leopold, A (1966) A Sand County Almanach. Oxford University Press. New York.