In June 1987 more than 200 people attended the first annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology in Bozeman, Montana, USA. The rapid growth of the new organization’s membership served as an index to the expansion of the field generally. SCB tapped into the burgeoning interest in interdisciplinary conservation science among younger students, faculty, and conservation practitioners. Universities ...
In the opening of Conservation Biology: An Evolutionary Ecological Perspective, Michael Soulé and Bruce Wilcox (1980) described conservation biology as “a mission-oriented discipline comprising both pure and applied science.” The phrase crisis-oriented (or crisis-driven) was soon added to the list of modifiers describing the emerging field (Soulé 1985). This characterization of conservation biology as a mission-oriented, crisis-driven, problem-solving field ...
Since conservation biology’s emergence, commentary on (and in) the field has rightly emphasized its departure from prior conservation science and practice. However, the main “thread” of the field the description, explanation, appreciation, protection, and perpetuation of biological diversity can be traced much further back through the historical tapestry of the biological sciences and the conservation movement (Mayr 1982;McIntosh 1985; ...
Our job is to harmonize the increasing kit of scientific tools and the increasing recklessness in using them with the shrinking biotas to which they are applied. In the nature of things we are mediators and moderators, and unless we can help rewrite the objectives of science we are predestined to failure.Aldo Leopold (1940; 1991) Conservation in the old sense, ...
Our actions have put humanity into a deep environmental crisis. We have destroyed, degraded, and polluted Earth's natural habitats indeed, virtually all of them have felt the in fluence of the dominant species. As a result, the vast majority of populations and species of plants and animals-key working parts of human life support systems are in decline, and many ...
