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protection. Its primary focus is upon maintaining the health of the [[Natural environment|natural world]]: its [[forest]]s, [[fishery|fisheries]], [[habitat (ecology)|habitats]], and [[biological diversity]]. Secondary focus is on [[materials conservation]] and [[energy conservation]], which are seen as important to protect the natural world.
[[Image:Bolivia-Deforestation-EO.JPG|thumb|right|200px|Satellite photograph of deforestation in progress in the Tierras Bajas project in eastern Bolivia. Photograph courtesy NASA.]]
==Introduction==
{{Environmental technology}}
To [[habitat conservation|conserve habitat]] in [[terrestrial ecoregion]]s and stop [[deforestation]] is a goal widely shared by many groups with a wide variety of motivations. ''These issues and groups are covered in their own articles.''

To protect sea life from [[extinction]] due to [[overfishing]] is another commonly stated goal of conservation — ensuring that "some will be available for our children" to continue a way of life.

The consumer conservation ethic is sometimes expressed by the ''four R's'': " Reduce, Recycle, Reuse, Rethink"
This social ethic primarily relates to [[local purchasing]], [[moral purchasing]], the [[sustainability|sustained]] and efficient use of [[renewable resource]]s, the moderation of destructive use of finite resources, and the prevention of harm to common resources such as [[air pollution|air]] and [[water pollution|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 — a view carried forward by the scientific [[conservation movement]] and some of the older [[Romanticism|Romantic]] schools of [[ecology movement]].

More [[utilitarian ethics|Utilitarian]] schools of conservation seek a proper valuation of local and global impacts of human activity upon nature in their effect upon human [[measuring well-being|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. This is a view common in the modern [[environmental movement]].

These movements have diverged but they have deep and common roots in the [[conservation movement]].

In the [[United States|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 Action", cataloged his observations of man exhausting and altering the land from which his sustenance derives.



==Usage of term==
{{Progressivism}}
In common usage, the term refers to the activity of systematically protecting natural resources such as forests, including [[biodiversity|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]], [[Economics|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). These are often summarized as the priority to [[respect diversity]], especially by [[Greens]].

Much recent movement in conservation can be considered a resistance to [[commercialism]] and [[globalization]]. [[Slow Food|Slow food]] is a consequence of rejecting these as moral priorities, and embracing a [[voluntary simplicity|slower and more locally-focused lifestyle]].

== History ==
The origins of biological conservation can be traced to [[ethical tradition|philosophical and religious beliefs]] about Man as a full part of Nature. Conserving natural resources and the environment is not a recent concern, but has deep cultural roots and the protection of nature, and especially forests, has been promoted for centuries.

The Torah, or Old Testament discusses the concept of the Sabbatical Year, a period whereby the fields are left fallow, presumably in order to rejuvenate the soil. This would appear to be an ancient form of the ecological practice of crop rotation. The weekly Sabbath is also a time when beasts of burden are given rest from their work. The Torah further prohibits the destruction of fruit bearing trees, and this commandment has been extended to encompass all manner of wastefulness.

[[Taoism|Taoist]] and [[Shintoism|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. [[Islam]] recognizes each species as its own "nation", and an obligation of man to [[khalifa]], or "stewardship" of the [[Earth]]. Specific conservation mechanisms such as [[haram]] and [[hima]] zones, and the origins of the idea of [[carrying capacity]], were a product of [[Islamic civilization]]. Indigenous strategies successfully combated soil erosion and deforestation in pre-colonial East Africa, as well as in the early colonial empires in China and Venice. As early as 450 BCE Artaxerxes I attempted to restrict cutting Lebanese timber (Grove 1992). Plato, writing in the 4th century BCE, noted that the removal of trees in Attica produced soil erosion "and what remains is like the skeleton of a body wasted by disease". Some historians claim that the idea of conservation originated in conflicts over the use of forests (Glacken 1965).

Conservationism embraces a spectrum of views, ranging from anthropocentric, utilitarian conservationism to radical eco-centric green eco-political views which advocate the total preservation of forest resources and which seek to establish a radically new relationship between humanity and nature. There are three main philosophical movements roughly characterized as '''conservation movement'''s (plural):

=== 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.<br >
[[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]]) and the [[Gaia philosophy]] that began to stem from it.

=== Resource conservation ===
[[Gifford Pinchot]], at the beginning of the [[20th century]], develops an [[ethics]] of [[resource conservation]], which is based on a utilitarian philosophy encapsulated in his slogan "the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time". Pinchot, trained as a forester in Europe, believed in the complementarity of conservation and development. 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 environment nor the erosion of resources. This view is taken by the modern [[environmental movement]] and the attempts to assign a [[value of Earth]], [[value of life]] and quantify [[nature's services]].

=== Evolutionary-ecological ===
With [[Aldo Leopold]] (''[[A Sand County Almanac]]'', 1949), an evolutionary ecology develops, a prospect marked by dynamism rather than by static conservation. In his famous chapter ''[[Land ethic|The Land Ethic]]'', 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.''

As an extension, [[Donella Meadows]] later defined [[eco-evolution]] as a prerequisite to the intelligent extension of a system — a theme carried to its limits by [[Deep Ecology]].

==Practice==
Beyond these philosophical underpinnings, one may think in terms of two distinct trends to the way in which conservation developed in practice. While many countries' efforts to preserve [[species]] and their [[habitats]] have been government-led, those in the [[United Kingdom]] tended to arise out of the middle-class or aristocratic interest in [[natural history]], expressed at the level of the individual and the national, regional or local [[learned society]]. Thus Britain had what we would today term [[NGOs]] — in the shape of the [[RSPB]], [[National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty|National Trust]] and County Naturalists' Trusts (dating back to 1889, 1895 and 1912 respectively) — a long time before it had [[National Parks]] and [[National Nature Reserves]]. This in part reflects the absence of wilderness areas over much of the country, as well as a longstanding interest in [[laissez-faire]] government, leaving it as no coincidence that [[John Muir]], the British-born founder of the National Park movement (and hence of government-sponsored conservation) did his sterling work in the USA, where he was the motor force behind the establishment of such NPs as [[Yosemite]] and [[Yellowstone]].

==See also==
*[[Conservation biology]]
*[[Conservationist]]
*[[Environmental organization]]s
*[[Ex-situ conservation]]
*[[In-situ conservation]]
*[[Federal Duck Stamp]]
*[[Global 200]]
*[[International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture]]
*[[List of conservation topics]]
*[[Protected area]]
*[[Timeline of environmental events]]
*[[Wildlife]]

== References ==
{{wikiquote}}
* Conservation: Replacing Quantity With Quality As a Goal for Global Management by Carl F. Jordan-John Wiley & Sons — ISBN 0-471-59515-2 — (January 1995)
* Conservation Biology : an evolutionary ecological perspective (Soulé et Wilcox, 1980)
* Conservation and evolution (Frankel et Soulé, 1981)
* Glacken, C.J. (1967) Traces on the Rhodian Shore. University of California Press. Berkeley
* Grove, R.H. (1992) 'Origins of Western Environmentalism', Scientific American 267(1): 22-27.
* Grove, R.H. (1997) ''Ecology, Climate and Empire: Colonialism and Global Environmental History 1400-1940'' Cambridge: Whitehorse Press
* Grove, R.H. (1995) ''Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Orgins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860'' New York: Cambridge University Press
* Leopold, A. (1966) ''A Sand County Almanac'' New York: Oxford University Press
* Pinchot, G. (1901) ''The Fight for Conservation'' New York: Harcourt Brace.

==External links==
*[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-59 ''Dictionary of the History of ideas'':] Conservation of Natural Resources
*[http://www.floridamemory.com/PhotographicCollection/photo_exhibits/everglades.cfm The Everglades in the Time of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas] Photo exhibit created by the State Archives of Florida
*[http://devon.freepgs.com/2006/08/burning-oil-night-and-day.php Illustrated essay on consumerism vs resource depletion]

[[Category:Conservation]]
[[Category:Environmental ethics]]

Conservation ethic - Revision history

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