The Conservation Controversy

Is the salvation of the living world in the hands of the human race, or are we the real endangered species?

                Conservation has become a buzz word lately.  Conversations which used to be largely reserved for ecologists, hippies, and hippy ecologists have begun to surface from Saks to Starbucks.  Even in times of economic chaos, the World Wildlife Fund and the Sierra Club had record donation years in 2009, and are on course to beat those records in 2010.  Have we humans finally opened our eyes to the direct correlation between our actions and the health of life on this planet? Are we too late to save the pandas and polar bears?  Or are we beginning to recognize that our actions are not making the planet uninhabitable for all life, but are simply rendering planet earth unfit for human life?

Whichever the case may be, conservation is appearing as an answer.  The protection of wild lands and the species of flora and fauna which inhabit them is moving toward the forefront of western values.  But do we understand enough about the natural world to counter our unintentional interferences with intentional ones?

conservation- noun

 1.  Preservation or restoration of the natural environment and wildlife. 2.  Preservation and repair of archaeological, historical, and cultural sites and artifacts. 3.  Careful use of a resource: i.e. energy conservation.

 (Oxford English Dictionary)

                The term conservation is often used to mean something different from what it is intended to describe.  When the conversation surrounds resources it is well used, describing the need for raised awareness surrounding our consumption of non-renewable natural resources, as is illustrated in the third portion of the definition above.  This is fine.   When the term is used while conversing about the need for restoration of the ancient Puebloan ruins in Mesa Verde National Park, as the second part of the definition explains, it is correctly wielded.  It is when the term is used as described by the first portion of Oxford’s definition that mistakes are made. 

The research field that concentrates on this first part of the definition is called, fittingly, conservation biology.  It is a field which attracts some of the most nimble and capable scientific minds of our and any time.  These ecologists conceptualize research opportunities which serve to ask and answer far reaching questions with grace and data.  This is not meant to undermine the work of men and women much more capable than I with a semantic dissection of their vocational moniker.  The mistakes I refer to are semantic, but that is only the beginning of the problem. 

Biologically speaking, conservation and preservation are synonymous, and many people believe that they refer to the health of an ecosystem, which they well might, for now.  However, inherent in the term preservation is the idea of stasis, and this is the beginning of the problem.  Nowhere in the 4.5 or so billion years that our planet has existed has stasis ever been a theme.  The dynamic properties of the planet and of life itself are the only constant.  While some will attempt to explain the potentially cyclical nature of our planet as a form of stasis, I believe this to be a gross oversimplification of our home world and its processes.  The truth is that this planet is ever changing.  So what was a healthy ecosystem yesterday might be a sick one tomorrow, all by itself.

The Benefits of Conservation

                I assure you that I am not attempting to undermine or counter the expansion of consciousness regarding conservation that has happened and is happening throughout the western world.  Quite the contrary, I am attempting to offer conversational fodder for those interested in taking another step towards understanding the human role in life on earth.  The benefits of conservation are clear:  improved overall health of the planet due to preservation of the interactions between plants and animals within all ecosystems, rebounds of many species due to restrictions and limitations on human use and abuse of certain areas, and an increase in information and awareness of our impact on the planet, to name a very limited few.  These results of conservation-minded efforts are invaluable to our knowledge and understanding of our planet.  Every recognized mistake is (hopefully) an avoided repetition. 

                The concept of conservation comes from the right place.  The traditional biological philosophy has been, “Let’s find out what’s going on.”  The conservation biology philosophy is, “Let’s find out what’s going on, figure out what we can do, and do it.”  Sounds like a step in the right direction to me.  And philosophically, it definitely is.  The intentions are good, and the science is sound or at least as sound as it possibly can be.  Conservation biologists have their hands tied by time and ecosystem complexity, not by incompetence.

 

The Problem with Conservation

                So this is clearly a complicated subject.  The science and scientist who work in the conservation biology field are among the best and the brightest.  There’s a bit of confusion regarding some words, but nothing that linguistic evolution can’t explain.  Where’s the controversy?  The controversy exists in the unintended consequences, namely management of wild lands as static versus dynamic ecosystems.  We as humans have been recording, observing, and attempting to explain our world since the first caveman met the second caveman.  Our inquisitiveness is inherent to our existence.  But Homo sapiens (that’s us) has only been around for about 200,000 years ago, and we certainly don’t have much record of the scientific musings of those early humans.  Realistically, our information about the planet comes principally from research conducted within the last 2,000 years, and most comes from the last 300 years or so.  Yet life has existed for over 4 billion years on this planet.  99.9% of all species that have ever existed are extinct.  It’s part of the process.  While I whole heartedly agree that our modern impact on life on this planet has certainly been less than beneficial, history shows time and time again that when we try to fix our mistakes, we magnify those mistakes. 

A good example of this principle exists within the native species versus invasive (non-native) species debate.  We tag plants and animals with these titles based on our anthropogenic history.  If we know a plant to be found in North Carolina, and it colonizes in Nevada, it is considered a wicked invasive which is potentially competing with the friendly native species that never tried to invade anybody.  By that rational, every plant and animal on the planet is an invasive.  I don’t know of a single living thing that developed from a prokaryotic, unicellular organism into something else, and didn’t move around.  Competition is at the heart of evolution.  Yet we find it necessary to remove invasive species.  REMOVE invasive species.  Sounds sort of Third Reich doesn’t it.  The argument I often get when I bring this up is that many aggressively invasive species reduce biodiversity by out-competing native species.  Sound familiar?  That’s right; humans fit the invasive bill pretty well.   So are we trying to reconcile our own invasiveness by policing the ecosystems of the world?  Now this psychological issue we may or may not have is not that terribly pressing.  I mean, it is, but not within the context of this discussion.

What is pressing is that we are quite literally stifling evolution by becoming involved.  Often people will counter this argument by saying that many of the invasive species we attempt to eradicate are there as a result of human introduction.  So what?  Are we not a member of the animal kingdom?  Do you see camels pulling out grasses that hitched a ride in their fur and colonized a new area in order to restore their perceived balance to the ecosystem?  Of course not.  Yet we insist on involving ourselves further by trying to rectify something that has already happened.

                The natural progression of life on the level of a single organism very closely mirrors the progression of life on the species level.  Birth, growth, peak, decline, death.  Conservation attempts to counter this natural progression by allowing certain species and habitats which are on the brink of extinction, for whatever reason, to perpetuate.  What would Darwin say?