A Dangerous Idea in Zoology: Ignoring the Role of Genetics in Biodiversity Restoration

Abstract

This paper is part of the theme edition of Australian Zoologist-"Dangerous Ideas in Zoology" Introduction to 'biodiversity' 'Biodiversity' emerged as a term in the ecological literature in the mid-1980s and, within a decade, it had become so popular that it could have been viewed as a 'new field of science' (Ghilarov 1996). Subsequently, there has been a 'steady increase' in the use of the term, and particularly since the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit Conference in Rio de Janeiro (Loreau et al. 2006), evidenced, for example, in the title of scientific articles (Kaennel 1998; Loreau et al. 2006). However, despite the concept having become entrenched in both the academic and the general language of the broader community 1, the term 'biodiversity' continues to be identified and evaluated differently at all levels of society, internationally and nationally, and among organisations, local communities, and even among researchers from different disciplinesgenetics, botany, anthropology, economics (Kaennel 1998; Ewers and Rodrigues 2006; Caillon and Degeorges 2007). Norton (2006) suggested that defining biodiversity appropriately was important because of its role as a 'proxy' for species conservation, and because it is effectively the only approach being considered in the minimisation of continued loss of species. Further, he also suggested that it was by no means a trivial task to define 'biodiversity'. This 1 At the end of September, 2014, the key word 'biodiversity' on 'Google' elicited 52,000,000 hits, and 'Google Scholar' 1,300,000. is because, in addition to the incorporation of ecological attributes within the definition, it also has to be considered in terms of social goals and values. Using the United States of America's (USA) Endangered Species Act 1973 as an example, Norton (2006) pointed out that social values were central to biodiversity conservation in that Act. It actually identifies the 'social values' of aesthetics, education, historical, and recreation, together with ecological and scientific attributes. As a consequence, it was suggested that any definition of biodiversity needed to span both 'policy discourse' and 'biological respectability'. To achieve this outcome, it was suggested that a 'bridge term' was required that 'linked discourse about policy goals to scientific data and theory, all within a discourse associated with policy choices' (Norton 2006, p. 50). The Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999 is the Federal Government's 'central piece of environmental legislation'. Its emphasis is different in some respects to that of the USA's Endangered Species Act in that the focus of the Federal legislation, and thus the states and territories, provides 'a legal framework to protect and manage nationally and internationally important flora, fauna, ecological communities and heritage'. If it is assumed that this

Effects of non-consumptive wildlife-oriented tourism on marine species and prospects for their sustainable management

“…However, with the limited knowledge on the impacts on focal individuals, their populations, and associated assemblages, it is difficult to reconcile closing venues on-shore (e.g., the dolphinariums across United Kingdom e Hughes, 2001;Parsons et al, 2003), thereby further encouraging interaction with wildlife in their natural environment. Viewing wildlife in captivity typically offers encounters with animals that have been selected for captivity (deliberately or accidently) due to the multiple bottlenecks imposed in the process of maintaining and breeding animals in captive (see Burgin, 2014). We suggest it would be more beneficial to the long term conservation of marine biodiversity to have animals professionally cared for animals in captivity than to encourage interaction with marine animals in their natural environment where, in most situations, knowledge of the focal species and associated assemblage is typically poorly understood.…”