Читать книгу Fundamentals of Conservation Biology - Malcolm L. Hunter Jr. - Страница 21

So where does conservation biology fit among these larger issues? Conservation biology is the applied science of maintaining the Earth’s biological diversity. A simpler, more obvious definition – biology as applied to conservation issues – would be misleading because conservation biology is both less and more than this. It is narrower than this definition because there are many biological aspects of conservation, such as biological research on how to grow timber faster, improve water quality, or graze more livestock, that are only tangentially related to conservation biology. On the other hand, it reaches far beyond biology into disciplines such as philosophy, economics, and sociology that are concerned with the social environment in which we practice conservation, the reasons we are motivated to maintain biodiversity, and disciplines such as law and education that shape the ways we implement conservation (Jacobson 1990 ; Soulé 1985). Fifty years ago, maintaining biological diversity simply meant saving endangered species from extinction and was considered a small component of conservation, completely overshadowed by forestry, soil and water conservation, fish and game management, and related disciplines. Now we know that we need a healthy and diverse biota for our own well‐being. And with so many species at risk of extinction and the idea of biological diversity extending to genes, ecosystems, and other biological entities, conservation biology has moved into the spotlight as the crisis discipline focused on saving life on Earth, perhaps the major issue of our time (Wilson 1992).

Conservation biology is best conceptualized as an amalgamation of disciplines as depicted in Fig. 1.4 (Jacobson 1990). It sits between basic biological sciences and natural resource sciences because it originated largely with biologists who have created a new natural resource science. It is different from traditional natural resource sciences because it places relatively greater emphasis on all forms of life and their intrinsic value, compared with traditional other natural resource sciences that usually focus on a few economically valuable species (Soulé 1985). Like natural resource sciences, conservation biology is influenced by the earth sciences because it addresses issues with strong environmental linkages. Finally, conservation biology depends heavily on social sciences, law, education, and other disciplines because it operates in the world of human socio‐economic–political institutions and seeks to change those institutions to allow people to coexist with the rest of the world’s species.

Figure 1.4 A schematic view of the relationship between conservation biology and other disciplines.

(Jacobson 1990/John Wiley & Sons)

This model also illustrates how any student wishing to become a conservation biologist needs to focus on courses in the basic biological sciences and the applied sciences of natural resource management while acquiring a substantial understanding of the subjects that shape the legal, policy, social and cultural arena within which conservation operates. This has also led to a growing role and critical role for students with a primary background in law, economics, communication, education and so on, and a secondary foundation in biology. In fact, the term “conservation science” is increasingly favored rather than “conservation biology” because the field is about so much more than biology.