The old conservation, the new conservation and the future of conservation

Abstract

A new movement led by the chair of the science cabi-net of The Nature Conservancy, one of North America’slargest conservation organizations, seeks to refocus thefield of conservation biology and the practical work ofconservation organizations by deemphasizing the goalof protecting nature for its intrinsic values in favor ofprotecting the environment for its benefits to humans(Doak et al. 2014). According to this position, conser-vation will keep failing unless it acknowledges that hu-mankind has already profoundly transformed the planet,that pristine wild lands are gone, and that most of thegrowing human population are city dwellers. “Whetheror not the developing world sets aside a large percentageof its landscapes as parks or wilderness over the nexthundred years, what is clear is that those protected areaswill remain islands of ‘pristine nature’ in a sea of pro-found human transformations to the landscape throughlogging, agriculture, mining, damming, and urbanization”(Kareiva et al. 2012).