I’ve never really entered the so-called (i.e., contrived) ‘debate’ regarding New Conservation, because I’ve always felt in my gut that it was a false dichotomy (turns out, I’m not the only one to think this). For this reason principally, I haven’t really examined the associated to and fro with any great interest or depth.
I will say this though — I was horrified last year in August while attending the International Congress for Conservation Biology (ICCB) in Montpellier during and after the now-infamous plenary debate between Kareiva and Spash on this ‘New Conservation’. Horrified. Yes.
Peter Kareiva, in his characteristic style, attempted to explain his position in what could be called a deliberately provocative and perhaps sensationalist manner. Clive Spash, on the other hand, took an almost quasi-religious idealogy and used it to smack Peter in the proverbial gob. It was a circus from the start, and unfortunately so badly moderated that neither side came off looking very good at all. The final, and dare I say, sycophantic standing ovation after Spash’s spittle-flecked sermon made me just a little sick to my stomach.
Really? Was all this swaggering, Shakespearean posturing justified? Is the discipline of conservation biology at a philosophical and ideological crossroads requiring its respective disciples to choose their favourite messiah from a binomial distribution? I didn’t think so then, and I’m even less inclined to think so now.
It was something of a vindication of that now year-old feeling when a paper came across my desk last week that was just published online in Conservation Biology, entitled Understanding conservationists’ perspectives on the new conservation debate by George Holmes, Chris Sandbrook and Janet Fisher. Read the rest of this entry »
ConservationBytes.com 