Conservation and Confusion: Wrong Species, Wrong Scale, Wrong Conclusions

Abstract

Self-congratulation has taken an extreme form in our new science of conservation biology, as workers define and redefine the field. Each new monograph and journal issue seems to describe conservation biology in more glowing terms a mission-oriented, synthetic, crisis discipline! What we are acknowledging, in our way, is that the population genetics and ecology we have been doing for so long is finally being noticed. Population biology with a purpose. We now have a role in determining the fate of life on earth, a role in stemming the tidal wave of extinctions that is sweeping our planet of its biological diversity. Eight years after the first conference on conservation biology and two years after the creation of a society for conservation biology, the time may be ripe to recess from congratulating ourselves and to rephrase Mayor Koch's often-asked question How are we doing? A national forum on biological diversity, adoption by the World Bank of strong wildland policy, and creation of new management strategies for species protection in our national parks all suggest that the word is out and that the message is being heard in high places. The immensity of our task and our satisfaction with our early efforts in population viability analysis, reserve design, and similar matters should not obscure the process by which we can reach our lofty goals. Fundamentally, conservation biology is applied population biology (with, of course, substantial contributions from fields as closely related as ecosystem ecology and landscape ecology and as far flung as hydrology, geology, anthropology, and political science). The old path of population biology, often paved with detailed studies of trivial ecological interactions and processes, polemics about the largely unmeasurable forces that have shaped our ecological communities, and statistical oneupmanship (all in a literature awash in jargon) will have to be abandoned in conservation biology. Conservation biology must be practical, must be usable, and must be accessible to land managers and wildlife biologists who need technical assistance. Above all, conservation biology must be responsible. In conservation biology there is no such thing as an academic argument. Population biologists previously have had the luxury of a small audience and a less pressing agenda. No more. Like medical practitioners who labor knowing that a wrong diagnosis or an inappropriate prescription could cost a life, we now must face the fact that a poorly designed experiment or misinterpretation of results can cost us precious populations, species, or entire ecosystems. We need to look no further than the row over SLOSS (the argument over the relative merits of a single large or several small reserves) for an example of how conservation biologists simply cannot afford to comport themselves in the future. The SLOSS battle was waged across dozens of journal pages over several years until it essentially ended with a clear statement of what was originally posited that all else being equal, reserves of larger area will support more species than reserves of smaller area. That statement is simple, intuitively obvious, and of great value to those empowered to design reserves. The argument that several small reserves of the same total area as a single large reserve often can be designed such that they capture greater species numbers is also true, rather obvious, and of practical value in reserve design, but it has no bearing on the SLOSS argument, since by definition, in such cases, all else is not equal. By not clearly stating the premises of the argument,