What is Conservation Science?
Conservation science is a field of biology that seeks to conserve species and natural biological communities within the landscape of human activities.
Conservation scientists use rigorous science-based approaches to determine which types of ecosystems and habitats are priorities for nature conservation, and rank the importance of those areas across the landscape for protection based on their biological significance. These studies incorporate a range of ecological data, including the habitat requirements of multiple species, functional biological communities, climate change, and ecosystem processes.
Some of the research tools conservation scientists employ to understand ecosystem function at the species, population and community levels include:
- Remote sensing
- Biological surveys
- Climate modeling
- Historical research
- Population demographics
- Soil sampling
- Ice and tree ring core sampling
- Conservation genetics studies
- Community ecology studies
- Geological studies
Using Geographic Information Systems, data collected from these research tools can be assimilated to create large-scale maps that identify and rank the areas that need to be protected for natural processes to persist. These maps are incorporated into strategic conservation plans that are adopted at the federal, state and local levels of government to guide conservation work. Strategic conservation plans detail the areas across the landscape where natural systems need to be be protected to preserve ecosystem services and long-term biological diversity.
Why Is It Important for Natural Processes to Persist and Why Should We Care About Protecting Nature?
There are scientific reasons, economic reasons, societal reasons and ethical reasons.
From a scientific view, living things (the biosphere) interact with Earth’s atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere through the planetary-scale cycling of energy and nutrients. The complexities of these interactions have contributed to Earth’s climactic stability since the ice ages. The oceans (because of microscopic phytoplankton) and forests are the lungs of our planet that produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Climate change due to anthropogenic fossil fuel use, resulting in extreme weather events and sea level rise, is occurring at ever-increasing rates globally, and scientists are reporting major die-offs of marine corals, forests, and entire species. We know from archaeological and paleontological research that climate instability is the main cause of Earth’s last five global mass extinctions. We are currently in the sixth. No one knows exactly what Earth’s climate will become in the next decades and centuries, but mass droughts and desertification will occur in some places and extreme flooding will occur in others.
From an economic view, natural systems provide ecosystem services, free of charge, that are often undervalued or not vaued at all in the costs of goods and services. Ecosystem services include the production of fresh water and oxygen, carbon sequestration, nutrient recycling, decomposition, pollination and seed dispersal. The disappearance and disruption of natural systems will affect food production, disease transmission, water availability, and usable land availability, resulting in higher costs of living. Sea level rise is already impacting low-lying coastal areas around the globe, and extreme weather is affecting homeowner insurance policy rates and mortgage markets. At some point, low-lying island nations and coastal communities will become uninhabitable and people will be forced to relocate to inland locations with higher elevation. Society will have to grapple with the integration of climate refugees, increased population density, and shifting population dynamics. As pressures on water, food, and land availability increase, societal issues concerning the rights to natural resources will become ever-more pressing. Protecting the natural systems that provide drinking water, water for agriculture, freshwater flows necessary for marine nurseries to ensure fish populations can persist, pollinators necessary for food production, and providing buffers between human activities and wilderness will both protect the natural systems and protect human populations from zoonotic diseases and adverse wildlife interactions.
Lastly, the amount of resources we allocate to nature protection turns on important ethical questions that speak to who we are fundamentally and what we value. Nature – both in her grandeur and humility – has been the inspiration for authors, painters, poets, songwriters throughout human history. Wilderness places touch our souls, provide solace, and are a source of joy in the diversity of plant and animal life. Visionaries of the past who protected the lands that are now our parks and forests left treasures beyond monetary value for future generations. Over the last decades, land protection efforts by governments and land conservation organizations have been outmatched by the powerful forces driving land development. Increased funding is needed, and greater political will. Conservationist Robert Swan famously wrote, “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” The world we leave for future generations is our choice.
How Can Land Be Permanently Protected?
Through conservation easements and deed restrictions.
A conservation easement is a legal property ownership interest in land held by a party other than the landowner.
Under the concept of property law in the United States, (which derives from property law invented during the Middle Ages in Europe), property ownership is viewed a bundle of different legal rights held by the property owner. One of those rights is the right to develop land as the owner pleases.
To protect land from development and other uses that adversely affect natural systems long-term, the property owner can sever the right to develop the land from the other rights he holds in his bundle. This is accomplished by a conservation easement agreement, a document drafted by a lawyer and recorded in the County Recorder’s Office, where property deeds are recorded. The conservation easement agreement lists in detail the conservation values of the property that are to be protected in perpetuity, and the land uses that will be severed from the property and thus disallowed to be undertaken by the present landowner, as well as by future landowners. Those severed land use rights are legally transfered to a non-profit land trust, which accepts the responsibility of ensuring the terms of the Conservation Agreement are upheld, regardless of who owns the land in the future.
Land Trust staff monitor the property, and the land trust purchases legal insurance in case a future land owner breaches the terms of the conservation easement agreement. If a landowner breaches the conservation easement agreement, a lawsuit would ensue to restore the conservation values protected by the conservation easement agreement to the property.
Deed restrictions are another tool that may be available to protect the conservation values of land permanently. In somes cases, landowners may be able to restrict future uses of a property by having an attorney enumerating those restrictions into the deed.
Forestlands Conservation Foundation 