What is Conservation Biology?

Question 1

What is conservation biology?

Answer 1

a recent response to the wave of global environmental change that is threatening to extinguish a tremendous portion of the world’s biological diversity

Question 2

What do conservation biologists view their main task as?

Answer 2

providing the intellectual and technological tools that will anticipate, prevent, minimize, and repair ecological damage

Question 3

How does conservation biology mainly differ from other biological sciences?

Answer 3

• it is often a crisis discipline, acting before knowing all of the facts (a science and art)
• multidisciplinary
• time scale
• holistic

Question 4

How is conservation biology multisisciplinary?

Answer 4

• many of the ideas, techniques, and methods come from a broad range of biological fields and also incorporates social science disciplines
• gives a theoretical approach to the protection of biodiversity

Question 5

What distinguishes conservation biology from natural resource fields?

Answer 5

• a dominance of utilitarian and economic objectives in natural resource fields
• the nature of these resources: a small number of valuable target species and a tiny fraction of the biota

Question 6

How is conservation biology different in terms of time scale?

Answer 6

conservation biologists attach more weight to the long range viability of whole ecosystems and species, including their evolutionary potential

Question 7

How is conservation biology holistic?

Answer 7

• reductionism alone cannot lead to explanations of community and ecosystem processes
• multidisciplinary approaches will ultimately be the most fruitful

Question 8

What are the ethical principles of conservation biology?

Answer 8

• diversity of organisms is good
• untimely extinction of populations and species is bad
• ecological complexity is good
• evolution is good
• biological diversity has intrinsic value