Physicists have their laws for thermodynamics, generations of chemists have studied their periodic tables, and in mathematics it’s (almost) all about axioms and analytical proofs. Biologists on the other hand do not have such solid foundation for their discipline nor are any generalizable laws likely ever to be found. Biologists do, however, have a lot of concepts that act as guiding principles for scientific discussion if nothing else and conservation biologists are not any different. In their recent essay, David Lindenmayer and Malcolm Hunter set out to list 10 guiding principles for conservation biology to
act as starting point for a larger discussion of what other conservation biologists regard as important.

To cut the story short, their list has the following items:

1. Successful conservation management requires explicit goals and objectives.
2. The overall goal of biodiversity management will usually be to maintain or restore biodiversity, not to maximize species richness.
3. A holistic approach is needed to solve conservation problems.
4. Diverse approaches to management can provide diverse environmental conditions and mitigate risk.
5. Using nature’s template is important for guiding conservation management, but it is not a panacea.
6. Focusing on causes not symptoms enhances efficacy and efficiency of conservation actions.
7. Every species and ecosystem is unique, to some degree.
8. Threshold responses are important but not ubiquitous.
9. Multiple stressors often exert critical effects on species and ecosystems.
10. Human values are variable and dynamic and significantly shape conservation efforts.

We could hardly disagree strongly with any of the items on the list, but we did find that the concepts presented are a rather heterogeneous lot. For example, while talking about explicit goals and objectives (concept 1) the authors give a detailed example, whereas other concept (e.g. concept 3) are much more general and vague. Then again it is a though job to try to avoid too much details and not making the concepts too general lacking all substance. Most welcomed concepts were 1 (“maintain species throughout their range”, we’ve all been frustrated with the vague objectives), 2 (more biodiversity = better just doesn’t cut it all the time), and 6 (no real hints how to do this, but still a very important concept).

We all approach things from an angle based on our own background with familiar concepts, vocabulary and semantics, our journal club leaning heavily on terminology coming from the sub-discipline of systematic conservation planning (SCP). The casual reader of this blog can also blame us for being too SCP-centric, but we felt that concepts like “complementarity” (sensu Pressey et al. 1993) are so essential for conservation planning process that it should be included in one of concepts, such as concept 2. Besides some missing terminology we also found the text being somewhat old-fashioned talking about concepts like umbrella species that have perhaps gone a little out of fashion ion the literature lately. On the other hand the authors were aiming at established concepts and consensus among conservation biologists, and usually consensus takes time to develop.

Some of us pointed out that the authors have a very management-oriented view on conservation as most conservation actions they are referring to involve active management or restoration. Conservation is also about letting Nature take its’ course with minimum human intervention, i.e. by establishing conservation areas. In the long run biodiversity conservation indeed should become an integral part of natural resource management, but even then some locations should be left untouched.

Of course, the whole point of the essay is to subject this one list to public discussion in order to see if it has not-so-important concepts on it or if it is missing some crucially important concepts. So the key question is, what did we have to add or remove? Frankly, it is a bit unclear yet. Assessing and measuring the effectiveness of conservation actions is enormously important task for the future. Although data are usually scarce, better methodology and protocols should be developed to understand how we really are doing. Perhaps this should be more explicitly stated in the guiding concepts list.

Since the weather in in summery Helsinki has pretty much emptied the corridors at out department we will still let the our vision clarify and hopefully we’ll post on the forum set up at the SCB web site. After all, the true value of this essay depends on how willing the conservation community is to participate in the discussion.

Discussion forum on the SCB web site:

http://www.conbio.org/projects/conservation_discussion/

Link to the paper:

Lindenmayer, D. & Hunter, M. (2010) Some Guiding Concepts for Conservation Biology. Conservation Biology, no-no.
doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01544.x

Extra reference:
Pressey, R. L., Humphries, C. J., Margules, C. R., Vane-Wright, R. I. and Williams, P. H. (1993): Beyond opportunism – key principles for systematic reserve selection. — Trends in Ecology & Evolution 8: 124-128.