Introduction

Major events in human history have, to a large extent, been driven by technology. Improved awareness of agriculture and metalworking brought mankind out of the Stone Age, while in the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution created a multitude of machinery together with ever-increasingly larger cities. The twentieth century was undoubtedly the age of chemistry and physics, spawning huge industrial activities such as petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, fertilisers, the atom bomb, transmitters, the laser and microchips. However, there can be little doubt that the huge understanding of the fundamentals of life processes achieved in the latter part of the twentieth century will ensure that the twenty-first century will be dominated by biology and the associated technologies.

Societal changes are increasingly driven by science and technology. Currently, the impact of new biological developments must be absorbed not just by a minority (the scientists) but also by large numbers (the general public). If this does not happen the majority will be alienated. It is increasingly important to ensure a broad understanding of what bioscience and its related technologies will involve, and especially what the consequences will be of accepting or rejecting the new technical innovations.

The following chapters will examine how the new biotechnologists are: developing new therapies and cures for many human and animal diseases; designing diagnostic tests for increasing disease prevention and pollution control; improving many aspects of plant and animal agriculture; cleaning and improving the environment; and designing clean industrial manufacturing processes.

What general themes emerge from the many facets of conservation? Firstly, although conservation is difficult, there is still much that can be achieved. Norman Myers points out the ‘splendid opportunity’ that faces us as we take decisions influencing uncountable trillions of people in the future. He reminds us that there is no greater mistake than to do nothing because we could only do a little. This is an essential point in conservation: individuals can make a difference. We will begin by looking at some conservation successes that highly motivated individuals or teams have brought about. I hope readers of this book will see how they too can make their own contributions to conservation. We shall then examine the future directions conservation may need to take.

Ideals and successes

In the 1980s, Mauritius was seen by many people as a hopeless case for conservation: 97% of its original habitat had been lost. Many species, including the dodo, giant tortoises, and several plants were known to have been exterminated – and untold others lost without trace. Its few remaining forests and several of its remaining endemic birds were highly endangered. Yet through co-operation between the Mauritian Government, Jersey and other zoos, and the dedication of conservationists in Mauritius, the situation is now far from bleak. The Mauritian pink pigeon, parakeet and kestrel and numerous plants have almost certainly been saved. Mauritius provides a model of the impact a committed government and a few dedicated people can have.

This chapter examines the methods for ecological survey that are required when evaluating sites for conservation. These methods are used for four main reasons: for base-line survey when choosing sites; for monitoring changes; for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) before developments; and for assessment of management methods – an evaluation before and after management will help detect and interpret changes due to that management. There are a number of basic principles and methods of ecological survey which must be understood in order to interpret survey results and reports. We will also examine the selection and use of indicator groups to give rapid assessment of sites, expanding concepts discussed in Sections 3.2 and 3.4.

The subject of this chapter is one of the most important to successful conservation, and is essential to those doing or interpreting field surveys. Similarly rigorous methods have been developed by social scientists, which can be used to obtain data on public opinion, local activities and local knowledge, as required in determining policy and management (Chapter 9). To avoid biases, questionnaires and interviews (including ‘participatory rural appraisal’) require careful design, piloting and distribution, and specialist texts should be consulted for such methods.

Aims and requirements

The aims of any survey must be very clearly defined, given the inevitable subjectivity of setting priorities. It must be absolutely clear from the start what will be considered a high-quality site.

Management is a central feature of conservation, and an enormous subject. This chapter outlines the general features of management of natural systems, and gives some examples for major biomes of the world.

Management is required to maintain the features of interest of an area, which have been identified by the methods in Chapter 3. For strict nature reserves this is often a protection of naturalness against threats to the species and to the integrity of the habitats in the reserve. In highly natural sites, the threats often come from outside the site, but the more human influence there has been in a site the more management may be required within the site itself. Naturalness may be defined as the lack of human influence, or as how little the habitat would change if there were no people there (Sections 3.2.2 and 4.4.1). We should be careful not to ‘overmanage’ sites – and so do more harm than the threats we are trying to prevent. Overmanagement is a risk when we know little about the natural processes of a site. It is also a waste of effort.

The reason for ‘detaching Man from Nature’ through such definitions is that the human species, through consciousness and prediction, is alone in being able to manage the natural factors that would control its population (Section 1.3.1). Management of the biosphere will be essential to compensate for the power we have developed to overexploit it.

General introduction

Conservation is perhaps one of the most important subjects to understand. Are we devoting too much effort to it, or too little? Future generations will discover the answer, and they will judge us in the way we judge those who wiped out the dodo or fought over diminishing resources on remote islands. Conservation means different things to different people. In this book I aim to show the broad scope of the subject, and the need to be aware of the interlinkage of many disciplines in theory and in practice. The subject includes fields as diverse as biology, philosophy, economics, chemistry, welfare and human rights. Conservation deals with issues that are very urgent – and, as we will see, often very controversial.

It should always be remembered that there are many personal and subjective opinions in conservation, as well as opinions supported by strong scientific consensus. The reader should see any book on conservation as an introduction to the debates, rather than a statement of universally agreed facts and solutions. It is important that people think for themselves about the issues, and decide what they feel are the strongest arguments supported by the best evidence.

This chapter examines the meaning of conservation, and how it has grown as a field. It also asks if we need conservation, and how much biodiversity there is. The second considers the general threats to biodiversity, and the third discusses the way priorities are set.

Our limited resources preclude customised management for the majority of species. Indeed, most species and their requirements may never be known to science. However, the management of several individual species simultaneously may make a substantial contribution to management of habitats, and the management of keystone species may be a particularly important part of such management (Section 3.1.4). Conservation focused on species may be applied in the wild habitat of the organism (‘in situ conservation’), or in captivity (‘ex situ conservation’), or both. This chapter examines conservation of individual species, and of groups of related species which can be treated together because they have similar requirements, threats, or appeal.

Local populations are being extirpated much faster than entire species, and whilst this is generally less irreversible than the loss of species, it makes each species more vulnerable. Prioritisation of populations for conservation may use methods similar to the prioritisation of species and habitats (Chapter 3), considering factors such as population size, position in a geographical unit, genetic distinctiveness, and the risk of parochialism (Section 3.1.2). Genetic markers (e.g. DNA sequences) can be used to identify the linkage, taxonomic distinctiveness, and hence phylogenetic importance of populations.

One form of customised management is to identify the way the local populations of a species are connected together by dispersal, and how these populations are created or lost. Sometimes a species occurs in several populations, and the most important aim is to conserve the whole population, rather than any local population.

The priorities in conservation should be to reduce extinction rates and to prevent further damage to ‘high-quality’ sites (Chapter 3). However, some sites which have already been damaged still retain valuable features and threatened species. There is increasing interest in attempting to rebuild such communities to a state more like the natural community. These efforts may prove to be particularly valuable when used to enlarge small fragments of habitat. Restoration has been defined by E. B. Welch and G. D. Cooke as ‘any active attempt to return an ecosystem to an earlier condition following degradation resulting from any kind of disturbance’. This includes a return to desirable semi-natural conditions. Several management principles relevant to restoration can be found in Chapters 5 and 7, although those chapters focus more on protection of existing interest and on maintenance of the interest once it has been restored.

Restoration has a long history in conservation. For example, some reforestation of Trinidad and Tobago was undertaken in the eighteenth century, using exotic bamboo to protect soils from erosion. In the English Lake District in the early 1800s, the poet Wordsworth appealed for the release of lakeside back to nature, and advised the planting of native tree species to restore attractive forests. Aldo Leopold was amongst the first ecologists to attempt restoration. From 1934 he worked in an old pasture in Wisconsin, USA, aiming to create and study an imitation of the local tallgrass prairie.

This chapter examines some of the main threats to biodiversity. No book can cover all of them. As we will see, extinctions and habitat alterations have been occurring for many thousands of years. We will examine the importance of human population growth, and our consumption of resources such as energy, food, water and land. We will also examine the problem of pollution, which occurs once the limited capacity of the environment to deal with waste is exceeded. We then turn to one of the oldest reasons for extinctions, introduced species, and relate this to the controversy over one of the potential new threats – genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Most species are threatened by several factors, some of which are not known. Threats may cause extinctions directly, or may cause ‘secondary extinctions’ of dependent specialist species.

One way to examine the threats is to look at the known causes of extinctions of species over the past 400 years (Fig. 2.1), and another is to look at the known threats to the species that are currently identified as officially threatened by the IUCN in their ‘Red Lists’ (Section 3.1.3 and Fig. 2.2). About 12% of vascular plant species, 25% of mammals, and 12% of birds, are listed as threatened. However, N. C. A. Pitman and P. M. Jørgansen have given more detailed consideration to the less well-studied tropical regions, and suggest that between a third and a half of the world's plant species are threatened.

Despite the high public interest in the environment in many parts of the world, conservationists are generally very short of funds. It is therefore essential to target the money that is available towards species or habitats where it will do the most good, and indeed to choose between an emphasis on species or on habitats. This may mean spending money in ways that might surprise people, for example on areas that are not the best of their type, or on species which are not the most highly endangered. Conservation requires money for research, for monitoring, for management, for education and for compensation. Many of the decisions in conservation relate to the availability and use of limited funds.

All decisions about priorities are subjective. The values attached to things, such as species or habitats, depend on the personal values of the people doing the evaluation. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, different people with different motives for conservation (Chapter 1) will assign values in different ways. Faced with a diversity of values, there may be a diversity of aims in conservation. Choosing one aim may require a democratic decision, or expert opinion – and so debates and controversies are likely.

Before any evaluation it is therefore essential to define the aims. It is also necessary to decide the weightings which are to be given to the different reasons for conservation (such as rarity or diversity) in a particular case.

Conservation is at the core of environmental science. Maintenance of the diversity of species and habitats, and the sustainable use of resources, are important to protect the options of future generations. Many would argue it is also a moral imperative that humanity does not needlessly destroy other inhabitants of this planet.

No single book can cover in depth the full range of the science and practice of conservation. I hope that this small guide can at least give an overview of the scope of the subject. It is intended to serve both as an introduction to those new to the field, and as a modern synthesis to demonstrate links between the many specialisms required in conservation. It focuses on generalities, which are illustrated by examples and supported by evidence from the field and from theory. It is intended as an aid for coursework, fieldwork, and management. Technical terms have been kept to a minimum. Instead of a glossary, a definition is given at the first use of specialist terms and phrases (which can be found via the index). There is slight overlap between some sections, to make each more self-explanatory. A huge amount is being written about conservation, and this book should help to guide readers towards the most influential specialist sources.

Environmental sciences are advancing rapidly, against a cultural and policy background that is changing even faster.

In this chapter we will examine briefly some of the economic issues in conservation. We will also consider the legal framework of conservation, and broader conservation policy. Since these topics change fast, and there are many differences between countries, specialist texts should be consulted for the latest situation. Conservation policy needs to be developed in the light of public opinion, which can indicate the social benefits of the policy. The results of some relevant opinion surveys are given in Table 9.1 and Fig. 9.1; these might overestimate the strength of opinion since it costs the respondent nothing to profess interest in conservation, but nevertheless the level of consistency across countries is interesting.

Economics

There are many circumstances when it is helpful to put a financial value on wildlife – for example to compare the costs and benefits of development and conservation options. Some people feel that valuation is an impossible task, because of the uncertainties in the numbers of species or their uses and because some values are hard to compare in the same units (they are economic ‘incommensurables’). Others (especially economists) feel this is a problem that economics can cope with. Some believe the very attempt to give wildlife an economic value is immoral, and that we should consider the intrinsic right of species to exist (Chapter 1). As the ethical arguments demonstrate, economics should be only one consideration amongst many in defining policy.

This chapter examines the controversial issues of sustainable management of species and habitats. Species can be managed to maintain yield in the long term, but I suggest this may often be achieved at a risk to conservation. Similarly, habitats have been managed by traditional methods to achieve long-term use of many natural resources, but we will examine the validity of these methods as a model for conservation. Sustainability has been defined in a variety of ways. One of the early definitions of sustainable development comes from the World Commission on Sustainable Development, in The Brundtland Report of 1987: ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. Sustainability has been considered for many years by resource managers such as foresters and fisheries officers, who have attempted to harvest in ways which maintain long-term yields. A basic tenet of such managers is the concept of ‘Maximum Sustainable Yield’ (‘MSY’), which we shall examine after considering how sustainability can be recognised.

Is sustainability an illusion?

With so many politicians and resource managers repeating the mantra of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘sustainability’, it would be easy to get the impression that the aim is realistic. But how can sustainability be detected and monitored? Are there proven examples of sustainability? And is sustainability in one sector only at the expense of another? In sum: is sustainability a comfortable illusion created by a lack of information?