Deep Ecology and Conservation Biology

Abstract

325 In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of us believed that most ecologists would concentrate on research clearly related to the solution of the ecological crisis. At the universities, however, the atmosphere encouraged "pure" research-research without definite, practical goals. Moreover, those who get jobs within the range of interest of big corporations work with goals in mind but rarely focus on the crisis and rarely "go public." Most high-level papers in ecological journals are extremely specialized and only remotely relevant for critical issues. In the early 1970s, those who focus on the general crisis warned supporters of the deep ecology movement not to expect much help from established researchers in scientific ecology. Then came conservation biology! It started as scientists and managers from many quarters realized that they profited by working together to combine theory with practice in their efforts to save the planet from further destruction. They were in a sense practitioners of ecology. They came from "biogeography, systematics, genetics, evolution, epidemiology, sociobiol-ogy, forestry, fisheries, wildlife biology, and the auxiliary sciences of agronomy , veterinary science, resource economics and policy, ethnobiology, and environmental ethics" (Soulé 1986: 5). Conservation biology is a movement. "The idea of conservation biology seems to convey several things at once, including scholarship, a common purpose, and the potential for making a significant personal contribution to the world. For students and established scientists alike, conservation biol-This article was reprinted with permission from Earth First! Journal (March 20, 1990): 29.