Conservation
Point of Views
Conservation
problems are an everyday concern for many people and organizations. The
concerns about environmental degradation are growing in a daily basis and so
are the efforts to defend nature and the environment. Unfortunately, the
general trend is, in my opinion, somewhat misguided. Scientists often do lots
of effort trying to learn from nature and we are obtaining increasingly more
knowledge about the environmental problems. However, due to the huge gap
between scientists and the general people, those researches often are lost in
the pages of a scientific journal that few people read or in a drawer of
governmental building not producing the results we expected.
Conservation
problems are many and diverse but they all have one thing in common: they
always have human origins. Nature, plants, animals and ecosystems in general
were doing great without us. The bottom line is that whatever the conservation
problem is, nature is not the problem, people are.
However, most conservation researches are oriented to manage nature. Wildlife
management, forest management, conservation of fisheries, and so on, always
deal primarily with managing the natural part of the system, the part that did
not have a problem!!
When one on has a
problem one can go to the root of it and eliminate the cause or one can do
half-as solutions and ameliorate the problem without ever solving it. Imagine
somebody that suffers of chronic headaches. There is probably a very good
reason for the headaches, they might be do to stress-related back tension,
sinus problems, dental issues such as grinding and clenching, lateral rotation
of some cervical vertebrates, as well as many other reasons not excluding a
brain tumor. One can try to seek the solution of the problem and try to solve
it or one can have a painkiller. This painkiller will not solve the problem but will let us get by. On time, the painkiller will not be
enough to take care of the problem and we will have to take higher douses of
painkiller or use a more powerful drug that can numb the pain. In the mean time
the problem can only be getting worse. If it is a dental problem it will not
improve, stress related pain will also get worse since the pain on itself
becomes a reason for stress, and, of course, if it a brain tumor this delay in
seeking a solution can mean a big difference. This is what I perceive as the
problems of our Tylenol approach to
conservation. While we have spent lots of efforts and resources in
sophisticated research related to management of habitats and nature, we have
given very little attention to the original cause of the problem.
I am not objecting
that we should learn about nature, genetic flow, habitats as well as resource
management. What I am trying to say is that, just like with Tylenol, we should
not expect to solve the problem by managing nature if we do not also do
substantial effort managing people. Unfortunately, managing people is not what
we (biologists) were trained to do and most scientist are reluctant in getting
involved in this kind of activities and often chose to stop short of doing what
needs to be done.
Now, what do
managing people involves? There are three basic ways to manage people. One of
them is religion, another one is education, and the last one is politics.
Religion is well known to be a powerful tool to manage people and modify
behavior of masses. Throughout history, religion has proven to produce great
result managing people; often times with unfortunate consequences however. That
is why I am reluctant to recommend that religion be used as a conservation
tool. I feel that it is similar to the Ring of great power of The Lord of
the Rings. In Tolkien’s story It has so much power that no body dared to wield it, even
the best meaning, and best prepared character, Gandalf, did not dare to wield
the power of the ring because he himself could be lured by its power away from
his original goals. This is the way I feel about including religion as a tool
for conservation, it has way too much power and a fear it what it might lead
to.
Education
The other tool for
managing people that most scientists feel comfortable is education. Most
scientists either by choosing or obligation are involved in teaching in
academic institutions however that is not really producing the result it
should. At the university level academicians might teach graduate students or
undergraduate students. At the graduate level, the universities, even
conservation programs, do not select students based on their potential to do
effective conservation but based on their potential to do basic research, just
like the people that do the selection, without really looking at what the real
needs for conservation are (Click here for a discussion
about it). There is still much to learn in that field.
At the undergraduate
level, I also feel that academicians are missing the main target for education.
College students are pretty much people that already
believe in the conservation causes, a bit like preaching to the converted. The
real need of education is toward masses of people that are not aware of
conservation problems and needs. Some universities and colleges require that
all students take some conservation or environmentally related class in order
to teach all the students the basic for conservation. While this is better than
nothing it falls to address the real problems. However, college students have
already developed their personalities and their priorities on life and are very
much established. On top of this they have the left over of a stubborn
adolescence plus the demands of the newly found adulthood (finding jobs,
spouses, etc) that occupies their mind and takes priority on their lives. I am
not saying that we should not teach them about 
conservation in college but the efforts that we do in
education are a lot better invested if we target the early
ages, grade school children that are avid to learn about life and their
personalities are developing. I contend that we must address the early ages
when we can try to instill love for nature. Conservation needs some sacrifices
and people will not do them if they do not love nature. Teaching kids to love
nature is the only way we can really address the global conservation crisis (click here for more about this). Unfortunately, although
some academics may agree with this, teaching children does not give tenure to
university professors and they do not see themselves bound to do this activity.
They believe that this is the job of grade school teachers. Poorly prepared,
worse paid, and overworked grade school teachers that is.
I believe that academician should work in coordination grade school teachers
and organize the work of their graduate students in that direction.
Politics vs
Policies
The last tool to
manage people is politics. Most academicians are willing to get involved in
conservation policies but they will run for their lives if you mention the word
politics. In many places we have done superb conservation research and
recommended great policies for conservation that never got implemented. In many
case, it is like Whitten and Mackinnon pointed out (2001, Conservation Biology.15:1-3) a bit of displacement behavior, we feel we
are doing something good by coming up with the way to preserve biodiversity but
it is not really producing any results. Basically because our
findings do not produce definitive actions that lead to conservation measures
being taken. I really believe that we need to go the extra mile if we
want conservation to be effective. We cannot hope that somebody will pick our
policies and technical suggestions and make them into actions. The people that has the knowledge on conservation does not have
the interest in politics and the people that are politically savvy does not
know or care about conservation. Who is going to do it? I contend that it is
us, by virtue of having the knowledge, that are called
for to bring conservation to the political arena.
The 2000
presidential election in the US was a glaring example of this problem in which
the whole academic crowd fails shamefully in guiding environmentally oriented
voters to vote for the environment (click here for a
discussion). This addresses the difference between policies and politics.
It us understandable that scientist are reluctant to get involved in politics
not only because of all the bad reputation that politicians have but also it is
not something that we are trained to do and most of us do not know anything
about politics. However, What good is it that we
figure out how to save biodiversity if we do not get the elected officials to
implement our suggestion? Can we really protect nature without having political
back up to our policies? The current trends and experiences show that we
cannot. There is something very important missing worldwide and I believe that
it is it. In totalitarian systems it is all too easy to get conservation
policies in place once you convince the power holder but in democratic systems
that is not the case. If we believe in democracies, how can we expect
conservation to have some results without using democracy’s greatest tools (click here for a discussion)?
I know what you are
thinking: "we do not want to get into politics because politicians are lying scum bags that only care about votes". I will not
argue against it. But this is the good news: politicians do care about votes!!
Why is this important? If there is a political force asking them to take green
policies and implement environmentally sound policies they will do it. We will
not get conservation policies in place until we get the politics to turn
towards conservation. In other words we need to work to produce a tide o
environmentally oriented voters in order to make it happen. We do not have to
side with one party or the other, but we have got to stand by our cause. To use
politics as a tool for conservation is, therefore, a demand of our job
description and we need to do it if we want to move forward in this
struggle.
Most of us do not
want to learn something new that we not necessarily like and when we are never
going to be good at, but it will mean the world of a difference if we do it or
not. Back in 1993 I was presented with a similar dilemma. I was living in my
homeland of
-mail to Jesus A. Rivas