What Is Conservation Science?

Working together: A call for inclusive conservation

“…This is a valid concern, and one of many reasons why we must continue to uphold intrinsic values to audiences who share those values, or may be inspired towards them. However, instrumental values will remain more powerful for other audiences, and should be used in the many contexts where broadening support for conservation is essential 4 .…”

“…Contention around this issue has come and gone many times, but in the past several years we believe that it has reappeared as an increasingly acrimonious debate between, in essence, those who argue that nature should be protected for its own sake (intrinsic value) 1,2 and those who argue that we must also save nature to help ourselves (instrumental value) [3][4][5] .…”

Anthropocentrism: More than Just a Misunderstood Problem

“…Goodpaster 1978;Rolston 1983;Taylor 1983). With the popularization of the concept of ecosystem services (MEA 2005), this debate has broadened to the conservation community at large (Kareiva and Marvier 2012), resulting in calls for inclusive conservation that accepts both forms of valuation (Tallis et al 2014). Many have argued that anthropocentrism is inevitable and even benign for the aim of environmental protection (Norton 1984;Weston 1985;Grey 1993), whereas others argue that anthropocentrism is inadequate for biodiversity conservation (Rolston 2012;Cafaro and Primack 2014;Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina 2016).…”

Conservation opportunities across the world's anthromes

“…The diversity of approaches presented in Table 1 reflects two tenets of conservation science (Kareiva & Marvier, 2012): first, that conservation planning should be approached through multiple strategies, and second, that humans should be considered part of ecosystems.…”