Environmental protection

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_protection 

 

Clean Ocean Project poster

Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment by individuals, organizations and governments. Its objectives are to conserve natural resources and the existing natural environment and, where possible, to repair damage and reverse trends.

Due to the pressures of overconsumption, population growth and technology, the biophysical environment is being degraded, sometimes permanently. This has been recognized, and governments have begun placing restraints on activities that cause environmental degradation. Since the 1960s, environmental movements have created more awareness of the multiple environmental problems. There is disagreement on the extent of the environmental impact of human activity, so protection measures are occasionally debated.

Approaches to environmental protection

Voluntary environmental agreements

In the industrial countries, voluntary environmental agreements often provide a platform for companies to be recognized for moving beyond the minimum regulatory standards and thus support the development of the best environmental practice. For instance, in India, Environment Improvement Trust (EIT) has been working for environmental and forest protection since 1998. In developing countries, such as Latin America, these agreements are more commonly used to remedy significant levels of non-compliance with mandatory regulation.

Ecosystems approach

An ecosystems approach to resource management and environmental protection aims to consider the complex interrelationships of an entire ecosystem in decision making rather than simply responding to specific issues and challenges. Ideally, the decision-making processes under such an approach would be a collaborative approach to planning and decision making that involves a broad range of stakeholders across all relevant governmental departments, as well as industry representatives, environmental groups, and community. This approach ideally supports a better exchange of information, development of conflict-resolution strategies and improved regional conservation. Religions also play an important role in the conservation of the environment.

International environmental agreements

Kyoto Protocol Commitment map 2010

Many of the earth's resources are especially vulnerable because they are influenced by human impacts across different countries. As a result of this, many attempts are made by countries to develop agreements that are signed by multiple governments to prevent damage or manage the impacts of human activity on natural resources. This can include agreements that impact factors such as climate, oceans, rivers and air pollution. These international environmental agreements are sometimes legally binding documents that have legal implications when they are not followed and, at other times, are more agreements in principle or are for use as codes of conduct. These agreements have a long history with some multinational agreements being in place from as early as 1910 in Europe, America and Africa.

Many of the international technical agencies formed after 1945 addressed environmental themes. By the late 1960s, a growing environmental movement called for coordinated and institutionalized international cooperation. The landmark United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm in 1972, establishing the concept of a right to a healthy environment. It was followed by the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme later that year. Some of the most well-known international agreements include the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Agreement of 2015.

On 8 October 2021, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution recognizing access to a healthy and sustainable environment as a universal right. In the resolution 48/13, the Council called on States around the world to work together, and with other partners, to implement the newly recognized right.

On 28 July 2022, the United Nations General Assembly voted to declare the ability to live in “a clean, healthy and sustainable environment” a universal human right. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet hailed the decision and called for urgent action to make it a reality for all.

Government

Top five countries by biological diversity

Discussion concerning environmental protection often focuses on the role of government, legislation, and law enforcement. However, in its broadest sense, environmental protection may be seen to be the responsibility of all the people and not simply that of government. Decisions that impact the environment will ideally involve a broad range of stakeholders including industry, indigenous groups, environmental group and community representatives. Gradually, environmental decision-making processes are evolving to reflect this broad base of stakeholders and are becoming more collaborative in many countries.

Tanzania

Many constitutions acknowledge Tanzania as having some of the greatest biodiversity of any African country. Almost 40% of the land has been established into a network of protected areas, including several national parks. The concerns for the natural environment include damage to ecosystems and loss of habitat resulting from population growth, expansion of subsistence agriculture, pollution, timber extraction and significant use of timber as fuel.

Environmental protection in Tanzania began during the German occupation of East Africa (1884-1919)—colonial conservation laws for the protection of game and forests were enacted, whereby restrictions were placed upon traditional indigenous activities such as hunting, firewood collecting, and cattle grazing. In 1948, Serengeti has officially established the first national park for wild cats in East Africa. Since 1983, there has been a more broad-reaching effort to manage environmental issues at a national level, through the establishment of the National Environment Management Council (NEMC) and the development of an environmental act.

Zebras at the Serengeti savana plains in northern part of Tanzania

Division of the biosphere is the main government body that oversees protection. It does this through the formulation of policy, coordinating and monitoring environmental issues, environmental planning and policy-oriented environmental research. The National Environment Management Council (NEMC) is an institution that was initiated when the National Environment Management Act was first introduced in year 1983. This council has the role to advise governments and the international community on a range of environmental issues. The NEMC the following purposes: provide technical advice; coordinate technical activities; develop enforcement guidelines and procedures; assess, monitor and evaluate activities that impact the environment; promote and assist environmental information and communication; and seek advancement of scientific knowledge.

The National Environment Policy of 1997 acts as a framework for environmental decision making in Tanzania. The policy objectives are to achieve the following:

• Ensure sustainable and equitable use of resources without degrading the environment or risking health or safety.
• Prevent and control degradation of land, water, vegetation and air.
• Conserve and enhance natural and man-made heritage, including biological diversity of unique ecosystems.
• Improve condition and productivity of degraded areas.
• Raise awareness and understanding of the link between environment and development.
• Promote individual and community participation.
• Promote international cooperation.
• Use ecofriendly resources.

Tanzania is a signatory to a significant number of international conventions including the Rio Declaration on Development and Environment 1992 and the Convention on Biological Diversity 1996. The Environmental Management Act, 2004, is the first comprehensive legal and institutional framework to guide environmental-management decisions. The policy tools that are parts of the act include the use of environmental-impact assessments, strategics environmental assessments, and taxation on pollution for specific industries and products. The effectiveness of shifting of this act will only become clear over time as concerns regarding its implementation become apparent based on the fact that, historically, there has been a lack of capacity to enforce environmental laws and a lack of working tools to bring environmental-protection objectives into practice.

China

The Longwanqun National Forest Park is a nationally protected nature area in Huinan County, Jilin, China.

Formal environmental protection in China House was first stimulated by the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, Sweden. Following this, they began establishing environmental protection agencies and putting controls on some of its industrial waste. China was one of the first developing countries to implement a sustainable development strategy. In 1983 the State Council announced that environmental protection would be one of China's basic national policies and in 1984 the National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) was established. Following severe flooding of the Yangtze River basin in 1998, NEPA was upgraded to the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) meaning that environmental protection was now being implemented at a ministerial level. In 2008, SEPA became known by its current name of Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People's Republic of China (MEP).

Pollution control instruments in China

Command-and-control	Economic incentives	Voluntary instruments	Public participation
Concentration-based pollution discharge controls	Pollution levy fee	Environmental labeling system	Clean-up campaign
Mass-based controls on total provincial discharge	Non-compliance fines	ISO 14000 system	Environmental awareness campaign
Environmental impact assessments (EIA)	Discharge permit system	Cleaner production	Air pollution index
Three synchronization program	Sulfur emission fee	NGOs	Water quality disclosure
Deadline transmission trading		Administrative permission hearing
Centralized pollution control	Subsidies for energy saving products
Two compliance policy	Regulation on refuse credit to high-polluting firms
Environmental compensation fee

Environmental pollution and ecological degradation has resulted in economic losses for China. In 2005, economic losses (mainly from air pollution) were calculated at 7.7% of China's GDP. This grew to 10.3% by 2002 and the economic loss from water pollution (6.1%) began to exceed that caused by air pollution. China has been one of the top performing countries in terms of GDP growth (9.64% in the past ten years). However, the high economic growth has put immense pressure on its environment and the environmental challenges that China faces are greater than most countries. In 2010 China was ranked 121st out of 163 countries on the Environmental Performance Index.

China has taken initiatives to increase its protection of the environment and combat environmental degradation:

• China's investment in renewable energy grew 18% in 2007 to $15.6 billion, accounting for ~10% of the global investment in this area;
• In 2008, spending on the environment was 1.49% of GDP, up 3.4 times from 2000;
• The discharge of CO (carbon monoxide) and SO2 (sulfur dioxide) decreased by 6.61% and 8.95% in 2008 compared with that in 2005;
• China's protected nature reserves have increased substantially. In 1978 there were only 34 compared with 2,538 in 2010. The protected nature reserve system now occupies 15.5% of the country; this is higher than the world average.

Rapid growth in GDP has been China's main goal during the past three decades with a dominant development model of inefficient resource use and high pollution to achieve high GDP. For China to develop sustainably, environmental protection should be treated as an integral part of its economic policies.

Quote from Shengxian Zhou, head of MEP (2009): "Good economic policy is good environmental policy and the nature of environmental problem is the economic structure, production form and develop model."

European Union

Environmental protection has become an important task for the institutions of the European Community after the Maastricht Treaty for the European Union ratification by all of its member states. The EU is active in the field of environmental policy, issuing directives such as those on environmental impact assessment and on access to environmental information for citizens in the member states.

Ireland

The Environmental Protection Agency, Ireland (EPA) has a wide range of functions to protect the environment, with its primary responsibilities including:

• Environmental licensing
• Enforcement of environmental law
• Environmental planning, education, and guidance
• Monitoring, analyzing and reporting on the environment
• Regulating Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions
• Environmental research development
• Strategic environmental assessment
• Waste management
• Radiological protection

Middle East

The Middle Eastern countries become part of the joint Islamic environmental action, which was initiated in 2002 in Jeddah. Under the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the member states join the Islamic Environment Ministers Conference in every two years, focusing on the importance of environment protection and sustainable development. The Arab countries are also awarded the title of best environment management in the Islamic world.

In August 2019, the Sultanate of Oman won the award for 2018–19 in Saudi Arabia, citing its project "Verifying the Age and Growth of Spotted Small Spots in the Northwest Coast of the Sea of Oman".

Russia

In Russia, environmental protection is considered an integral part of national safety. The Federal Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology is the authorized state body tasked with managing environmental protection. However, there are a lot of environmental issues in Russia.

Latin America

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has identified 17 megadiverse countries. The list includes six Latin American countries: Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela. Mexico and Brazil stand out among the rest because they have the largest area, population and number of species. These countries represent a major concern for environmental protection because they have high rates of deforestation, ecosystems loss, pollution, and population growth.

Brazil

Panorama of the Iguazu falls in Brazil

Brazil has the largest amount of the world's tropical forests, 4,105,401 km² (48.1% of Brazil), concentrated in the Amazon region. Brazil is home to vast biological diversity, first among the megadiverse countries of the world, having between 15%-20% of the 1.5 million globally described species.

The organization in charge of environment protection is the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment (in Portuguese: Ministério do Meio Ambiente, MMA). It was first created in the year 1973 with the name Special Secretariat for the Environment (Secretaria Especial de Meio Ambiente), changing names several times, and adopting the final name in the year 1999. The Ministry is responsible for addressing the following issues:

• A national policy for the environment and for water resources;
• A policy for the preservation, conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems, biodiversity, and forests;
• Proposing strategies, mechanisms, economic and social instruments for improving environmental quality, and sustainable use of natural resources;
• Policies for integrating production and the environment;
• Environmental policies and programs for the Legal Amazon;
• Ecological and economic territorial zoning.

In 2011, protected areas of the Amazon covered 2,197,485 km² (an area larger than Greenland), with conservation units, like national parks, accounting for just over half (50.6%) and indigenous territories representing the remaining 49.4%.

Mexico

The axolotl is an endemic species from the central part of Mexico.

With over 200,000 different species, Mexico is home to 10–12% of the world's biodiversity, ranking first in reptile biodiversity and second in mammals—one estimate indicates that over 50% of all animal and plant species live in Mexico.

The history of environmental policy in Mexico started in the 1940s with the enactment of the Law of Conservation of Soil and Water (in Spanish: Ley de Conservación de Suelo y Agua). Three decades later, at the beginning of the 1970s, the Law to Prevent and Control Environmental Pollution was created (Ley para Prevenir y Controlar la Contaminación Ambiental).

In the year 1972 was the first direct response from the federal government to address eminent health effects from environmental issues. It established the administrative organization of the Secretariat for the Improvement of the Environment (Subsecretaría para el Mejoramiento del Ambiente) in the Department of Health and Welfare.

The Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, SEMARNAT) is Mexico's environment ministry. The Ministry is responsible for addressing the following issues:

• Promote the protection, restoration, and conservation of ecosystems, natural resources, goods, and environmental services and facilitate their use and sustainable development.
• Develop and implement a national policy on natural resources
• Promote environmental management within the national territory, in coordination with all levels of government and the private sector.
• Evaluate and provide determination to the environmental impact statements for development projects and prevention of ecological damage
• Implement national policies on climate change and protection of the ozone layer.
• Direct work and studies on national meteorological, climatological, hydrological, and geohydrological systems, and participate in international conventions on these subjects.
• Regulate and monitor the conservation of waterways

In November 2000 there were 127 protected areas; currently there are 174, covering an area of 25,384,818 hectares, increasing federally protected areas from 8.6% to 12.85% of its land area.

Oceania

Australia

The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the largest barrier reef in the world.

In 2008, there was 98,487,116 ha of terrestrial protected area, covering 12.8% of the land area of Australia. The 2002 figures of 10.1% of terrestrial area and 64,615,554 ha of protected marine area were found to poorly represent about half of Australia's 85 bioregions.

Environmental protection in Australia could be seen as starting with the formation of the first national park, Royal National Park, in 1879. More progressive environmental protection had it start in the 1960s and 1970s with major international programs such as the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, the Environment Committee of the OECD in 1970, and the United Nations Environment Programme of 1972. These events laid the foundations by increasing public awareness and support for regulation. State environmental legislation was irregular and deficient until the Australian Environment Council (AEC) and Council of Nature Conservation Ministers (CONCOM) were established in 1972 and 1974, creating a forum to assist in coordinating environmental and conservation policies between states and neighbouring countries. These councils have since been replaced by the Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council (ANZECC) in 1991 and finally the Environment Protection and Heritage Council (EPHC) in 2001.

At a national level, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 is the primary environmental protection legislation for the Commonwealth of Australia. It concerns matters of national and international environmental significance regarding flora, fauna, ecological communities and cultural heritage. It also has jurisdiction over any activity conducted by the Commonwealth, or affecting it, that has significant environmental impact. The act covers eight main areas:

• National Heritage Sites
• World Heritage Sites
• Ramsar wetlands
• Nationally endangered or threatened species and ecological communities
• Nuclear activities and actions
• Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
• Migratory species
• Commonwealth marine areas

There are several Commonwealth protected lands due to partnerships with traditional native owners, such as Kakadu National Park, extraordinary biodiversity such as Christmas Island National Park, or managed cooperatively due to cross-state location, such as the Australian Alps National Parks and Reserves.

At a state level, the bulk of environmental protection issues are left to the responsibility of the state or territory. Each state in Australia has its own environmental protection legislation and corresponding agencies. Their jurisdiction is similar and covers point source pollution, such as from industry or commercial activities, land/water use, and waste management. Most protected lands are managed by states and territories with state legislative acts creating different degrees and definitions of protected areas such as wilderness, national land and marine parks, state forests, and conservation areas. States also create regulation to limit and provide general protection from air, water, and sound pollution.

At a local level, each city or regional council has responsibility over issues not covered by state or national legislation. This includes non-point source, or diffuse pollution, such as sediment pollution from construction sites.

Australia ranks second place on the UN 2010 Human Development Index and one of the lowest debt to GDP ratios of the developed economies. This could be seen as coming at the cost of the environment, with Australia being the world leader in coal exportation and species extinctions. Some have been motivated to proclaim it is Australia's responsibility to set the example of environmental reform for the rest of the world to follow.

New Zealand

At a national level, the Ministry for the Environment is responsible for environmental policy and the Department of Conservation addresses conservation issues. At a regional level the regional councils administer the legislation and address regional environmental issues.

Switzerland

See also: Environmental protection in Switzerland

The environmental protection in Switzerland is mainly based on the measures to be taken against global warming. The pollution in Switzerland is mainly the pollution caused by vehicles and the litteration by tourists.

United States

Yosemite National Park in California, one of the first protected areas in the United States

Since 1970, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been working to protect the environment and human health.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters.

All US states have their own state-level departments of environmental protection, which may issue regulations more stringent than the federal ones.

In January 2010, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson published via the official EPA blog her "Seven Priorities for EPA's Future", which were (in the order originally listed):

• Taking action on climate change
• Improving air quality
• Assuring the safety of chemicals
• Cleaning up [US] communities
• Protecting America's waters
• Expanding the conversation on environmentalism and working for environmental justice
• Building strong state and tribal partnerships

As of 2019, it is unclear whether these still represent the agency's active priorities, as Jackson departed in February 2013, and the page has not been updated in the interim.

India

The Constitution of India has a number of provisions demarcating the responsibility of the Central and State governments towards Environmental Protection. The state's responsibility with regard to environmental protection has been laid down under article 48-A of our constitution which stated that "The states shall endeavor to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forest and wildlife of the country".

Environmental protection has been made a fundamental duty of every citizen of India under Article 51-A (g) of the constitution which says "It shall be the duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment including forests, lakes, rivers, and wildlife and to have compassion for living creatures".

Article 21 of the constitution is a fundamental right, which states that "No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to the procedure established by law".

In literature

There are numerous works of literature that contain the themes of environmental protection but some have been fundamental to its evolution. Several pieces such as A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, "Tragedy of the commons" by Garrett Hardin, and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson have become classics due to their far reaching influences. The conservationist and Nobel laureate Wangari Muta Maathai devoted her 2010 book Replenishing the Earth to the Green Belt Movement and the vital importance of trees in protecting the environment.

The subject of environmental protection is present in fiction as well as non-fictional literature. Books such as Antarctica and Blockade have environmental protection as subjects whereas The Lorax has become a popular metaphor for environmental protection. "The Limits of Trooghaft" by Desmond Stewart is a short story that provides insight into human attitudes towards animals. Another book called The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury investigates issues such as bombs, wars, government control, and what effects these can have on the environment.

Wetland conservation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetland_conservation

Nearly a quarter of the Estonian territory is covered by wetlands, much of which is protected. Männikjärve bog in Endla Nature Reserve.

Wetland conservation is aimed at protecting and preserving areas where water exists at or near the Earth's surface, such as swamps, marshes and bogs. Wetlands cover at least six per cent of the Earth and have become a focal issue for conservation due to the ecosystem services they provide. More than three billion people, around half the world’s population, obtain their basic water needs from inland freshwater wetlands. The same number of people rely on rice as their staple food, a crop grown largely in natural and artificial wetlands. In some parts of the world, such as the Kilombero wetland in Tanzania, almost the entire local population relies on wetland cultivation for their livelihoods.

Fisheries are also an extremely important source of protein and income in many wetlands. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the total catch from inland waters (rivers and wetlands) was 8.7 million metric tonnes in 2002. In addition to food, wetlands supply fibre, fuel and medicinal plants. They also provide valuable ecosystems for birds and other aquatic creatures, help reduce the damaging impact of floods, control pollution and regulate the climate. From economic importance, to aesthetics, the reasons for conserving wetlands have become numerous over the past few decades.

Wetland definition

Various definitions of wetlands exist. The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, also known as the Ramsar Convention, defines wetlands as including: lakes and rivers, swamps and marshes, wet grasslands and peatlands, oases, estuaries, deltas and tidal flats, near-shore marine areas, mangroves and coral reefs, and human-made sites such as fish ponds, rice paddies, reservoirs, and salt pans. Meanwhile, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or Wetlands Reserve Program, describes wetlands as "those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or groundwater at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions. Wetlands generally include swamps, marshes, bogs and similar areas." Wetlands vary widely in their salinity levels, climatic zones, supported flora, surrounding geography, whether they are coastal or inland and so on.

Wetland

Wetland functions

The main functions performed by wetlands are: water filtration, water storage, biological productivity, and provide habitat for wildlife. Additional functions and uses of wetlands are described in wetland.

Filtration

Wetlands support a vast and intricate food web which provides many functions and services to nature and humans.

Wetlands aid in water filtration by removing excess nutrients, slowing the water allowing particulates to settle out of the water which can then be absorbed into plant roots. Studies have shown that up to 92% of phosphorus and 95% of nitrogen can be removed from passing water through a wetland. Wetlands also let pollutants settle and stick to soil particles, up to 70% of sediments in runoff. Some wetland plants have even been found with accumulations of heavy metals more than 100,000 times that of the surrounding waters' concentration. Without these functions, the waterways would continually increase their nutrient and pollutant load, leading to an isolated deposit of high concentrations further down the line. An example of such a situation is the Mississippi River’s dead zone, an area where nutrient excess has led to large amounts of surface algae, which use up the oxygen and create hypoxic conditions (very low levels of oxygen).

Wetlands can even filter out and absorb harmful bacteria from the water. Their complex food chain hosts various microbes and bacteria, which invertebrates feed on. These invertebrates can filter up to 90% of bacteria out of the water this way.

Storage

Wetlands can store approximately 1-1.5 million gallons of floodwater per acre. When you combined with the approximate total acres of wetlands in the United States (107.7 million acres), means that US wetlands can likely store over a trillion gallons of floodwater. By storing and slowing water, wetlands allow groundwater to be recharged. "A 550,000 acre swamp in Florida has been valued at $25 million per year for its role in storing water and recharging the aquifer." And combining the ability of wetlands to store and slow down water with their ability to filter out sediments, wetlands serve as strong erosion buffers.

Biological productivity

Through wetlands ability to absorb nutrients, they are able to be highly biologically productive (able to produce biomass quickly). Freshwater wetlands are even comparable to tropical rainforests in plant productivity. Their ability to efficiently create biomass may become important to the development of alternative energy sources.

While wetlands only cover around 5% of the Conterminous United States’s land surface, they support 31% of the plant species. They also support, through feeding and nesting, up to ½ of the native North American bird species. Bird populations, while playing a major role in food webs, are also the focus of several, well-funded recreation sports. (Waterfowl hunting and bird watching to name a pair)

Wildlife habitat

Wildlife Habitat is important not only for the conservation of species but also for a number of recreational opportunities. As a conservation purpose, wildlife habitat is managed for maintaining and using the resources in sustainable manner. Ninety-five percent of all commercially harvested fish and shellfish in the United States are wetland dependent. Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge is an example of recreational destination for hunting, fishing, wildlife observation and photography that has a good wildlife management. Some parts of the area are wetlands managed for providing habitat of migratory birds, such as waterfowl and songbirds. The 14 million United States hunters generate in excess of $50 billion annually in economic activity. This does not include the 60 million people that watch migratory birds as a hobby. The Florida Keys wetland area generates more than $800 million in annual tourism income alone.

Wetlands can support surprisingly large diversity of birds even when managed for human use, like the community-managed wetlands of the Gangetic floodplains of northern India that have among the highest human densities in the world but also have the highest known bird diversity in agricultural wetlands anywhere. Similarly, contrary to common assumptions that high human densities in tropical would deter bird use of urban ponds (wetlands < 5 ha), ponds of Delhi, the capital city of India, have over 117 bird species, that are ~37% of all birds ever seen in the city. These relatively recent studies from the global south are helping understand that traditional human use of wetlands for myriad purposes, when illegal hunting is controlled to minimal levels via cultural beliefs, can sustain biodiversity and serve as excellent wildlife habitats.

Conservation by country

Conservation efforts vary in intensity and method by country. The following list is not comprehensive.

New Zealand

Main article: Wetlands of New Zealand

Over 90% of the wetlands in New Zealand have been drained since European settlement, predominantly to create farmland. Wetlands now have a degree of protection under the Resource Management Act 1991.

Republic of Macedonia

The fragments of wetland habitats that are still in existence in the Republic of Macedonia are present as marsh or swamp communities. These patches are present at Studenchishte (small fragment near Ohrid Lake), Pelagonia (village Chepigovo), Negortsi Spa, Bansko, Belchishte wetland and Monospitovo marsh. The large areas of swamps that used to be present in most of the valleys in contemporary Republic of Macedonia have undergone a great transformation over the last 50–60 years. The main cause for their reduction is land reclamation, drainage, and conversion into arable land for agricultural needs (Smith and Smith, 2003). Some of the remaining wetlands (Negortsi Spa, Bansko) are of great importance for understanding the genesis of marsh vegetation in the Republic of Macedonia as many mountainous marshes and peat bogs suffered anthropogenic transformation due to the capturing of water from mountain springs and streams for the purposes of generating drinking water (Smith, 2003). Accordingly, the fragmentation and transformation of previous swamps had a major impact on faunal distribution and abundance. Amphibians are the most affected species along with invertebrate and vertebrate groups including the European Otter (Lutra Lutra L.). It is listed as Nearly Threatened according to the IUCN’s red list and mainly found now only in the Belchishte wetland (Smith 2003; Smith and Smith, 2003). The otter has importance for the wetland communities not just in Macedonia but also in other European countries such as the Netherlands and Germany (Reuther, 1995; Reuther et al., 2001). Macedonian wetlands lie within the network of some of the bigger rivers in Macedonia including the Vardar River, a catchment area equal to 80% of Macedonian territory.

South Africa

The South African Department of Environmental Affairs in conjunction with the departments of Water Affairs and Forestry, and of Agriculture, supports the conservation and rehabilitation of wetlands through the Working for Wetlands program. The aim of this program is to encourage the protection, rehabilitation and sustainable use of South African wetlands through co-operative governance and partnerships. The program is also a poverty relief effort, providing employment in wetland maintenance.

Sweden

The Swedish national wetland inventory (VMI) is one of the world's most extensive systematic inventories of nature types that has ever been done. VMI has surveyed the wetlands of Sweden below the alpine region during a 25-year period. In total 35 000 objects (sites) are included in VMI, corresponding to an area of 4.3 million hectares, or 10% of the land area of Sweden. The aim of the survey has been to increase the general knowledge of wetlands in Sweden, as a basis for environmental monitoring and natural resources planning. By investigating the impact of human activities on wetlands and identifying the most valuable wetlands, their values can be preserved for future generations. The results from the inventory were also meant to function as background data for the authorities' decisions concerning e.g. drainage permits.

United States

Main article: Wetland conservation in the United States

The US wetland conservation efforts are rooted partly in legislative requirements specifying that when a proposal is made to drain or fill a wetland, the proposers in many cases must offset the loss by restoring or constructing wetlands nearby that are of the same or greater size and levels of function. Several states within the US have additional requirements that must be met when wetland alteration is proposed. In addition, several federal programs provide financial incentives for wetland protection to private individuals whose land contains wetlands not completely protected by federal or state laws.

A restoration project by the State of Florida in the Everglades acquired U.S. Sugar Corporation land allowing for water delivery, water treatment, and water storage of sufficient quantity and quality to mimic the Everglades' natural system.

Kenya

Further information: Ondiri Wetland

Ondiri is Kenya's largest wetland with 34.5 hectares and 40 springs.  By 2016, the Nyongara River, which flowed out of the wetland in Kikuyu, Kenya nearly dried up. Raw sewerage from Kikuyu flowed into at the highland bog. Water usage for the 44 neighboring green-house farms was unregulated. And solid waste was dumped in Ondiri.

The Kiambu County Governor, Dr. James Nyoro said that the National government has set aside resources to improve the status of the wetland to be a tourist attraction. The National Environment Management Association Chairman John Konchellah stated that his organization has started monitoring and assessing the wetlands. The endeavor includes the creation of site-specific management plans for wetlands around the country. This research will inform future conservation and management plans for the wetlands.

Awarded Wetland Conservation Projects

2015

Weishan Wetland Park | ASLA National Awards | Professional Category | Award of Honor - General Design |

2014

Liupanshui Minghu Wetland Park | ASLA National Awards | Professional Category | Award of Honor - General Design |

Hunter's Point South Waterfront Park | ASLA National Awards | Professional Category | Award of Honor - General Design |

2012

Qunli Stormwater Park in Harbin | ASLA National Awards | Professional Category | Award of Excellent - General Design |

2011

Stone River in Eastern New York State | ASLA National Awards | Professional Category | Award of Honor - General Design |

2010

Shanghai Houtan Park | ASLA National Awards | Professional Category | Award of Excellent - General Design |

The Qinhuangdao Beach Restoration | ASLA National Awards | Professional Category | Award of Honor - General Design |

Tianjin Qiaoyuan Park | ASLA National Awards | Professional Category | Award of Honor - General Design |

2009

Beijing Olympic Forest Park | ASLA National Awards | Professional Category | Award of Honor - General Design |

2008

Lagoon Park in California | ASLA National Awards | Professional Category | Award of Honor - General Design |

Conservation movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_movement 

The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental, and social movement that seeks to manage and protect natural resources, including animal, fungus, and plant species as well as their habitat for the future. Conservationists are concerned with leaving the environment in a better state than the condition they found it in. Evidence-based conservation seeks to use high quality scientific evidence to make conservation efforts more effective.

The early conservation movement evolved out of necessity to maintain natural resources such as fisheries, wildlife management, water, soil, as well as conservation and sustainable forestry. The contemporary conservation movement has broadened from the early movement's emphasis on use of sustainable yield of natural resources and preservation of wilderness areas to include preservation of biodiversity. Some say the conservation movement is part of the broader and more far-reaching environmental movement, while others argue that they differ both in ideology and practice. Conservation is seen as differing from environmentalism and it is generally a conservative school of thought which aims to preserve natural resources expressly for their continued sustainable use by humans.

History

See also: Timeline of environmental events

Early history

Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty's Dominions, title page of the first edition (1664)

The conservation movement can be traced back to John Evelyn's work Sylva, presented as a paper to the Royal Society in 1662. Published as a book two years later, it was one of the most highly influential texts on forestry ever published. Timbre resources in England were becoming dangerously depleted at the time, and Evelyn advocated the importance of conserving the forests by managing the rate of depletion and ensuring that the cut down trees get replenished.

The field developed during the 18th century, especially in Prussia and France where scientific forestry methods were developed. These methods were first applied rigorously in British India from the early 19th century. The government was interested in the use of forest produce and began managing the forests with measures to reduce the risk of wildfire in order to protect the "household" of nature, as it was then termed. This early ecological idea was in order to preserve the growth of delicate teak trees, which was an important resource for the Royal Navy.

Concerns over teak depletion were raised as early as 1799 and 1805 when the Navy was undergoing a massive expansion during the Napoleonic Wars; this pressure led to the first formal conservation Act, which prohibited the felling of small teak trees. The first forestry officer was appointed in 1806 to regulate and preserve the trees necessary for shipbuilding.

This promising start received a setback in the 1820s and 30s, when laissez-faire economics and complaints from private landowners brought these early conservation attempts to an end.

In 1837, American poet George Pope Morris published "Woodman, Spare that Tree!", a Romantic poem urging a lumberjack to avoid an oak tree that has sentimental value. The poem was set to music later that year by Henry Russell. Lines from the song have been quoted by environmentalists.

Origins of the modern conservation movement

Conservation was revived in the mid-19th century, with the first practical application of scientific conservation principles to the forests of India. The conservation ethic that began to evolve included three core principles: that human activity damaged the environment, that there was a civic duty to maintain the environment for future generations, and that scientific, empirically based methods should be applied to ensure this duty was carried out. Sir James Ranald Martin was prominent in promoting this ideology, publishing many medico-topographical reports that demonstrated the scale of damage wrought through large-scale deforestation and desiccation, and lobbying extensively for the institutionalization of forest conservation activities in British India through the establishment of Forest Departments. Edward Percy Stebbing warned of desertification of India. The Madras Board of Revenue started local conservation efforts in 1842, headed by Alexander Gibson, a professional botanist who systematically adopted a forest conservation program based on scientific principles. This was the first case of state management of forests in the world.

These local attempts gradually received more attention by the British government as the unregulated felling of trees continued unabated. In 1850, the British Association in Edinburgh formed a committee to study forest destruction at the behest of Dr. Hugh Cleghorn a pioneer in the nascent conservation movement.

He had become interested in forest conservation in Mysore in 1847 and gave several lectures at the Association on the failure of agriculture in India. These lectures influenced the government under Governor-General Lord Dalhousie to introduce the first permanent and large-scale forest conservation program in the world in 1855, a model that soon spread to other colonies, as well the United States. In the same year, Cleghorn organised the Madras Forest Department and in 1860 the department banned the use shifting cultivation. Cleghorn's 1861 manual, The forests and gardens of South India, became the definitive work on the subject and was widely used by forest assistants in the subcontinent. In 1861, the Forest Department extended its remit into the Punjab.

Schlich, in the middle of the seated row, with students from the forestry school at Oxford, on a visit to the forests of Saxony in the year 1892

Sir Dietrich Brandis, a German forester, joined the British service in 1856 as superintendent of the teak forests of Pegu division in eastern Burma. During that time Burma's teak forests were controlled by militant Karen tribals. He introduced the "taungya" system, in which Karen villagers provided labor for clearing, planting and weeding teak plantations. After seven years in Burma, Brandis was appointed Inspector General of Forests in India, a position he served in for 20 years. He formulated new forest legislation and helped establish research and training institutions. The Imperial Forest School at Dehradun was founded by him.

Germans were prominent in the forestry administration of British India. As well as Brandis, Berthold Ribbentrop and Sir William P.D. Schlich brought new methods to Indian conservation, the latter becoming the Inspector-General in 1883 after Brandis stepped down. Schlich helped to establish the journal Indian Forester in 1874, and became the founding director of the first forestry school in England at Cooper's Hill in 1885. He authored the five-volume Manual of Forestry (1889–96) on silviculture, forest management, forest protection, and forest utilization, which became the standard and enduring textbook for forestry students.

Conservation in the United States

F. V. Hayden's map of Yellowstone National Park, 1871

 

Main article: Conservation in the United States

The American movement received its inspiration from 19th century works that exalted the inherent value of nature, quite apart from human usage. Author Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) made key philosophical contributions that exalted nature. Thoreau was interested in peoples' relationship with nature and studied this by living close to nature in a simple life. He published his experiences in the book Walden, which argued that people should become intimately close with nature. The ideas of Sir Brandis, Sir William P.D. Schlich and Carl A. Schenck were also very influential—Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the USDA Forest Service, relied heavily upon Brandis' advice for introducing professional forest management in the U.S. and on how to structure the Forest Service.

Both conservationists and preservationists appeared in political debates during the Progressive Era (the 1890s–early 1920s). There were three main positions.

• Laissez-faire: The laissez-faire position held that owners of private property—including lumber and mining companies, should be allowed to do anything they wished on their properties.
• Conservationists: The conservationists, led by future President Theodore Roosevelt and his close ally George Bird Grinnell, were motivated by the wanton waste that was taking place at the hand of market forces, including logging and hunting. This practice resulted in placing a large number of North American game species on the edge of extinction. Roosevelt recognized that the laissez-faire approach of the U.S. Government was too wasteful and inefficient. In any case, they noted, most of the natural resources in the western states were already owned by the federal government. The best course of action, they argued, was a long-term plan devised by national experts to maximize the long-term economic benefits of natural resources. To accomplish the mission, Roosevelt and Grinnell formed the Boone and Crockett Club, whose members were some of the best minds and influential men of the day. Its contingency of conservationists, scientists, politicians, and intellectuals became Roosevelt's closest advisers during his march to preserve wildlife and habitat across North America.
• Preservationists: Preservationists, led by John Muir (1838–1914), argued that the conservation policies were not strong enough to protect the interest of the natural world because they continued to focus on the natural world as a source of economic production.

The debate between conservation and preservation reached its peak in the public debates over the construction of California's Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite National Park which supplies the water supply of San Francisco. Muir, leading the Sierra Club, declared that the valley must be preserved for the sake of its beauty: "No holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man."

President Roosevelt put conservationist issues high on the national agenda. He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter, Gifford Pinchot and was deeply committed to conserving natural resources. He encouraged the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 to promote federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230 million acres (360,000 mi² or 930,000 km²) under federal protection. Roosevelt set aside more federal land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined.

Roosevelt was a leader in conservation, fighting to end the waste of natural resources.

Roosevelt established the United States Forest Service, signed into law the creation of five national parks, and signed the year 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed 18 new national monuments. He also established the first 51 bird reserves, four game preserves, and 150 national forests, including Shoshone National Forest, the nation's first. The area of the United States that he placed under public protection totals approximately 230,000,000 acres (930,000 km²).

Gifford Pinchot had been appointed by McKinley as chief of Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture. In 1905, his department gained control of the national forest reserves. Pinchot promoted private use (for a fee) under federal supervision. In 1907, Roosevelt designated 16 million acres (65,000 km²) of new national forests just minutes before a deadline.

In May 1908, Roosevelt sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use. Roosevelt delivered the opening address: "Conservation as a National Duty".

In 1903 Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, who had a very different view of conservation, and tried to minimize commercial use of water resources and forests. Working through the Sierra Club he founded, Muir succeeded in 1905 in having Congress transfer the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley to the federal government. While Muir wanted nature preserved for its own sake, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees."

Theodore Roosevelt's view on conservationism remained dominant for decades; Franklin D. Roosevelt authorised the building of many large-scale dams and water projects, as well as the expansion of the National Forest System to buy out sub-marginal farms. In 1937, the Pittman–Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act was signed into law, providing funding for state agencies to carry out their conservation efforts.

Theodore Roosevelt with trophy killing.

While Theodore Roosevelt was one of the leading activists for the conservation movement in the United States, he also believed that the threats to the natural world were equally threats to white Americans. They held the belief that the cities, industries and factories that were overtaking the wilderness and threatening the native plants and animals were also consuming and threatening the racial vigor that they believed white Americans held which made them superior. Roosevelt was a big believer that white male virility depended on wildlife for its vigor, and that depleting wildlife would result in a much weaker nation. This lead Roosevelt to support the passing of many immigration restrictions, eugenics legislations and wildlife preservation laws. He drew much inspiration for his beliefs from Madison Grant, a well known American eugenicist and conservationist. Grant worked alongside Roosevelt in the American conservation movement and was even secretary and president of the Boone and Crockett Club. In 1916, Grant published the book "The Passing of the Great Race", which explained the hierarchy of races, with white, "Nordic" men at the top, and all other races below. The German translation of this book was used by Nazi Germany as the source for many of their beliefs.

The National Audubon Society was founded in 1905 with the priority of protecting/conserving various waterbird species. However, the first state-level Audubon group was created in 1896 by Harriet Hemenway and Minna B. Hall to convince women to refrain from buying hats made with bird feathers- a common practice at the time. The organization is named after John Audubon, a naturalist and legendary bird painter. The lesser known truth is that he was a slaveholder who also included many racist tales in his many books. Despite his views of racial inequality, Audubon did find black and indigenous people to be scientifically useful, often using their local knowledge in his books and relying on them to collect specimens for him.

Since 1970

Environmental reemerged on the national agenda in 1970, with Republican Richard Nixon playing a major role, especially with his creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. The debates over the public lands and environmental politics played a supporting role in the decline of liberalism and the rise of modern environmentalism. Although Americans consistently rank environmental issues as "important", polling data indicates that in the voting booth voters rank the environmental issues low relative to other political concerns.

The growth of the Republican party's political power in the inland West (apart from the Pacific coast) was facilitated by the rise of popular opposition to public lands reform. Successful Democrats in the inland West and Alaska typically take more conservative positions on environmental issues than Democrats from the Coastal states. Conservatives drew on new organizational networks of think tanks, industry groups, and citizen-oriented organizations, and they began to deploy new strategies that affirmed the rights of individuals to their property, protection of extraction rights, to hunt and recreate, and to pursue happiness unencumbered by the federal government at the expense of resource conservation.

In 2019, convivial conservation was an idea proposed by Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher. Convivial conservation draws on social movements and concepts like environmental justice and structural change to create a post-capitalist approach to conservation.

Conservation in Costa Rica

Figure 1. Costa Rica divided into different areas of conservation

Tapantí National Park

Although the conservation movement developed in Europe in the 18th century, Costa Rica as a country has been heralded its champion in the current times. Costa Rica hosts an astonishing number of species, given its size, having more animal and plant species than the US and Canada combined while being only 250 miles long and 150 miles wide. A widely accepted theory for the origin of this unusual density of species is the free mixing of species from both North and South America occurring on this "inter-oceanic" and "inter-continental" landscape. Preserving the natural environment of this fragile landscape, therefore, has drawn the attention of many international scholars.

Costa Rica has made conservation a national priority, and has been at the forefront of preserving its natural environment with over a quarter of its land designated as protected in some form, which is under the administrative control of SINAC (National System of Conservation Areas)  a division of MINAE (Ministry of Environment, Energy and Telecommunications). SINAC has subdivided the country into various zones depending on the ecological diversity of that region - these zones are depicted in figure 1.

The country has used this ecological diversity to its economic advantage in the form of a thriving ecotourism industry, putting its commitment to nature, on display to visitors from across the globe. It is estimated that a record 2.6 million foreigners visited the country in 2015, almost half the population of Costa Rica itself. This tourism is facilitated by the fact that Costa Rica has a stable democracy and has a human development index of 0.776, the highest for any country in Latin America.

It is also the only country in the world that generates more than 99% of its electricity from renewable sources, relying on hydropower (78%), wind (10%), geothermal energy (10%), biomass and solar (1%). Critics have pointed out however, that in achieving this milestone, the country has built several dams (providing the bulk of its electricity) some of which have negatively impacted indigenous communities as well as the local flora and fauna.

World Wide Fund for Nature

Main article: World Wide Fund for Nature

You know, when we first set up WWF, our objective was to save endangered species from extinction. But we have failed completely; we haven’t managed to save a single one. If only we had put all that money into condoms, we might have done some good.

— Sir Peter Scott, Founder of the World Wide Fund for Nature, Cosmos Magazine, 2010

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1961, working in the field of the wilderness preservation, and the reduction of human impact on the environment. It was formerly named the "World Wildlife Fund", which remains its official name in Canada and the United States.

WWF is the world's largest conservation organization with over five million supporters worldwide, working in more than 100 countries, supporting around 1,300 conservation and environmental projects. They have invested over $1 billion in more than 12,000 conservation initiatives since 1995. WWF is a foundation with 55% of funding from individuals and bequests, 19% from government sources (such as the World Bank, DFID, USAID) and 8% from corporations in 2014.

WWF aims to "stop the degradation of the planet's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature." The Living Planet Report is published every two years by WWF since 1998; it is based on a Living Planet Index and ecological footprint calculation. In addition, WWF has launched several notable worldwide campaigns including Earth Hour and Debt-for-Nature Swap, and its current work is organized around these six areas: food, climate, freshwater, wildlife, forests, and oceans.

"Conservation Far" approach

A conservation-exploitation dichotomy has plagued a place many may not expect: Conservation institutions. Institutions such as the WWF have historically been the cause of the displacement and divide between native populations and the lands they inhabit. The overbearing reason behind this rather contradictory truth is because of the organization's historically colonial, paternalistic, and neoliberal approaches to conservation. Claus, in his article "Drawing the Sea Near: Satoumi and Coral Reef Conservation in Okinawa", expands on these approaches and their effectiveness, not as much in conservation, but in creating the value of and commercializing endangered flora and fauna. One way in which this has taken place is through a separation between people, even locals, and the nature spaces they aimed to protect. This is what Claus calls the "Conservation-Far" method, in which access to lands is completely relinquished upon the locals and tourists, by an external, foreign entity. This entity is largely unaware of the customs and values held by those within the territory surrounding nature and their role within it.

Claus relays the history of an Island in Japan, Shiraho, in which the people's traditional ways of tending to nature were lost due to modernization and the rise of a fast-paced lifestyle. It is the view of a "Conservation-Near" approach that would suggest a regeneration of these customs within the local area. This engages those near in proximity to the lands in the conservation efforts and holds them accountable for their direct effects on its preservation. Unlike the hands-on, full sensory experience permitted by conservation-near methodologies, conservation-far drills visuals and sight as being the main interaction medium between people and the environment. An emphasis on observation only stems from a deeper association with intellect and observation. The alternative to this is more of a bodily or "primitive" consciousness, which is associated with lower-intelligence and people of color. A new, integrated approach to conservation is being investigated in recent years by institutions such as WWF.

Evidence-based conservation

Evidence-based conservation is the application of evidence in nature conservation management actions and policy making. It is defined as systematically assessing scientific information from published, peer-reviewed publications and texts, practitioners' experiences, independent expert assessment, and local and indigenous knowledge on a specific conservation topic. This includes assessing the current effectiveness of different management interventions, threats and emerging problems and economic factors.

Evidence-based conservation was organized based on the observations that decision making in conservation was based on intuition and or practitioner experience often disregarding other forms of evidence of successes and failures (e.g. scientific information). This has led to costly and poor outcomes. Evidence-based conservation provides access to information that will support decision making through an evidence-based framework of "what works" in conservation.

The evidence-based approach to conservation is based on evidence-based practice which started in medicine and later spread to nursing, education, psychology and other fields. It is part of the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.

Areas of concern

A conservation area's sign in the Finnish forest. It says, "A conservation area protected by law".

Deforestation and overpopulation are issues affecting all regions of the world. The consequent destruction of wildlife habitat has prompted the creation of conservation groups in other countries, some founded by local hunters who have witnessed declining wildlife populations first hand. Also, it was highly important for the conservation movement to solve problems of living conditions in the cities and the overpopulation of such places.

Boreal forest and the Arctic

The idea of incentive conservation is a modern one but its practice has clearly defended some of the sub Arctic wildernesses and the wildlife in those regions for thousands of years, especially by indigenous peoples such as the Evenk, Yakut, Sami, Inuit and Cree. The fur trade and hunting by these peoples have preserved these regions for thousands of years. Ironically, the pressure now upon them comes from non-renewable resources such as oil, sometimes to make synthetic clothing which is advocated as a humane substitute for fur. (See Raccoon dog for case study of the conservation of an animal through fur trade.) Similarly, in the case of the beaver, hunting and fur trade were thought to bring about the animal's demise, when in fact they were an integral part of its conservation. For many years children's books stated and still do, that the decline in the beaver population was due to the fur trade. In reality however, the decline in beaver numbers was because of habitat destruction and deforestation, as well as its continued persecution as a pest (it causes flooding). In Cree lands, however, where the population valued the animal for meat and fur, it continued to thrive. The Inuit defend their relationship with the seal in response to outside critics.

Latin America (Bolivia)

The Izoceño-Guaraní of Santa Cruz Department, Bolivia, is a tribe of hunters who were influential in establishing the Capitania del Alto y Bajo Isoso (CABI). CABI promotes economic growth and survival of the Izoceno people while discouraging the rapid destruction of habitat within Bolivia's Gran Chaco. They are responsible for the creation of the 34,000 square kilometre Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco National Park and Integrated Management Area (KINP). The KINP protects the most biodiverse portion of the Gran Chaco, an ecoregion shared with Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. In 1996, the Wildlife Conservation Society joined forces with CABI to institute wildlife and hunting monitoring programs in 23 Izoceño communities. The partnership combines traditional beliefs and local knowledge with the political and administrative tools needed to effectively manage habitats. The programs rely solely on voluntary participation by local hunters who perform self-monitoring techniques and keep records of their hunts. The information obtained by the hunters participating in the program has provided CABI with important data required to make educated decisions about the use of the land. Hunters have been willing participants in this program because of pride in their traditional activities, encouragement by their communities and expectations of benefits to the area.

Africa (Botswana)

In order to discourage illegal South African hunting parties and ensure future local use and sustainability, indigenous hunters in Botswana began lobbying for and implementing conservation practices in the 1960s. The Fauna Preservation Society of Ngamiland (FPS) was formed in 1962 by the husband and wife team: Robert Kay and June Kay, environmentalists working in conjunction with the Batawana tribes to preserve wildlife habitat.

The FPS promotes habitat conservation and provides local education for preservation of wildlife. Conservation initiatives were met with strong opposition from the Botswana government because of the monies tied to big-game hunting. In 1963, BaTawanga Chiefs and tribal hunter/adventurers in conjunction with the FPS founded Moremi National Park and Wildlife Refuge, the first area to be set aside by tribal people rather than governmental forces. Moremi National Park is home to a variety of wildlife, including lions, giraffes, elephants, buffalo, zebra, cheetahs and antelope, and covers an area of 3,000 square kilometers. Most of the groups involved with establishing this protected land were involved with hunting and were motivated by their personal observations of declining wildlife and habitat.

Predation problem

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predation_problem 

 

A snowy owl carries a killed American black duck

The predation problem or predation argument refers to the consideration of the harms experienced by animals due to predation as a moral problem, that humans may or may not have an obligation to work towards preventing. Discourse on this topic has, by and large, been held within the disciplines of animal and environmental ethics. The issue has particularly been discussed in relation to animal rights and wild animal suffering. Some critics have considered an obligation to prevent predation as untenable or absurd and have used the position as a reductio ad absurdum to reject the concept of animal rights altogether. Others have criticized any obligation implied by the animal rights position as environmentally harmful.

Responses from animal ethicists and rights advocates have been varied. Some have rejected the claim that animal rights as a position implies that we are obligated to prevent predation, while others have argued that the animal rights position does imply that predation is something that we should try to avert. Others have asserted that it is not something that we should do anything about now due to the risk that we could inadvertently cause significant harm, but that it is something that we may be able to effectively take action on in the future with improved knowledge and technologies.

Historical views

Problem of evil

See also: Problem of evil § Problem of evil and animal suffering, and Evolutionary theodicy

Predation has historically been viewed as a natural evil within the context of the problem of evil and has been considered a moral concern for Christians who have engaged with theodicy. Natural evils have been sometimes thought of as something that humans should work towards alleviating, or as part of a greater good which justifies the existence of this type of evil. Thomas Aquinas advocated the latter view, arguing that "defects" in nature such as predation led to the "good of another, or even to the universal good" and that if "all evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe". Within Christian and Hebrew Scripture, there are several prophecies which describe a future Heaven or Earth where predation is no longer a feature of nature, including Isaiah's prophecy that "[t]he wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them."

In his notebooks (written between 1487 and 1505), Leonardo da Vinci questioned why nature was not structured in a way which meant that animals were not forced to consume each other to survive. David Hume made several observations about predation and suffering experienced by wild animals in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), stating that the "stronger prey upon the weaker, and keep them in perpetual terror and anxiety".

William Paley, in Natural Theology, described predation as being the most challenging of God's work to establish the utility of, nevertheless, he defended predation as the means to deal with the potentially catastrophic effects of animals producing more offspring than can possibly survive.

The debate around predation and the problem of evil was significantly increased by the popularization of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. Some earlier Christians argued that violence in nature was a result of the fall of man, but evidence that predation has existed for millions of years before the evolution of humans and the concept of sin, indicates that while life has existed, there has never been a time where nature has been free from violence. Darwin himself questioned how the fact that the Ichneumonidae prey on the bodies of living caterpillars could be reconciled with the idea of an omnibenevolent God.

Criticism of moral judgements

Plutarch criticised the labelling of carnivorous animals such as lions, tigers and snakes as barbarous because for them killing is a necessity while for humans who can live off of "nature's beneficent fruits" killing is a "luxury and crime".

The writer Edward Augustus Kendall discussed predation in his book of moral fables The Canary Bird (1799), in which he argued that predatory behavior by animals should not be judged by human moral standards and that "a prejudice against particular creatures, for fancied acts of cruelty is absurd".

Philosophical pessimism

Giacomo Leopardi, the Italian poet and philosopher, in Operette morali (1827) engaged in a dialogue with Nature in "Dialogue between Nature and an Icelander", which uses the inevitability of predation—such as a squirrel fleeing from a rattlesnake, only to run into the snake's open mouth—as a moral indictment on nature's cannibalism of its own offspring. The inevitability of such cycles of destruction and creation was a cause for Leopardi's philosophical pessimism. In Zibaldone, published posthumously in 1898, Leopardi argued that predation is the ultimate indication of the evil design of nature.

Similar to Leopardi, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, in 1851, used the pain experienced by an animal being devoured by another as a refutation against the idea that the "pleasure in the world outweighs the pain".

Animal rights

Lewis Gompertz, an early animal rights advocate, and one of the first contemporary authors to address the problem of wild animal suffering, in the fifth chapter of his 1824 book Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, engaged in a dialogue, in which he asserted that animals devouring each other can be judged as wrong by the rules that we use to govern human lives and stated that "should I witness the attempt in any animal of destroying another, I would endeavour to frustrate it; though this might probably be wrong." He went on to argue that the extinction of carnivorous species would not be bad, claiming that the species of one animal is not more important than an equal number of another and that it would be possible for some carnivorous animals, like wolves, to instead sustain themselves on vegetables.

The American zoologist and animal rights philosopher J. Howard Moore, in The New Ethics (1907), labelled carnivorous species as "criminal" races whose "existence is a continual menace to the peace and well-being of the world" because the "fullness of their lives is dependent upon the emptiness and destruction of others". In the pamphlet Why I Am a Vegetarian, published in 1895, Moore described the Carnivora as "relentless brutes", whose existence is a travesty for ethics, justice and mercy. In Better-World Philosophy (1899), Moore argued that carnivorousness was the result of excessive egoism, a product of natural selection, stating "Life riots on life—tooth and talon, beak and paw". He went on to claim that the irredeemable nature of carnivorous species meant that they could not be reconciled with each other in his ideal arrangement of the universe, which he called a "Confederation of the Consciousnesses".

In 1903, the Scottish philosopher David G. Ritchie in response to Henry S. Salt's 1892 book Animals' Rights, claimed that giving animals rights would imply that we must "protect the weak among them against the strong" and to achieve this, carnivorous animals should be put to death or slowly starved by "permanent captivity and vegetarian diet". He considered this proposal absurd, stating that the "declaration of the rights of every creeping thing [is] to remain a mere hypocritical formula to gratify pug-loving sentimentalists".

Contemporary views

Animal ethics

In 1973, Australian philosopher Peter Singer argued that if humans were to try to prevent predation, such as from stopping lions killing gazelles, that it would likely increase the "net amount of animal suffering", but asserted that if hypothetically we could reduce suffering in the long-term, then it would be right to intervene.

The English philosopher Stephen R. L. Clark's "The Rights of Wild Things" (1979) is considered to be one of the first ethics papers to explicitly engage with predation as a problem. In the paper, Clark argues that the concept that humans are obligated to aid animals against predators is not absurd, but that it follows only in the abstract, not in practice.

Animal rights philosopher, Tom Regan in his 1983 book, The Case for Animal Rights, argued that humans have no obligation to prevent predation because carnivorous animals are not moral agents and as a result cannot violate the rights of the animals that they predate. Along these lines, Julius Kapembwa argues that "intervention in predation is neither required nor permitted by animal rights theory".

Steve Sapontzis, in his 1984 paper "Predation" argues against the idea that the problem of predation is a reductio ad absurdum for animal rights, instead, he claims that if we accept the view that we have an obligation to reduce avoidable animal suffering, then predation is something that we should work towards preventing if we can do so without inflicting greater suffering. Sapontzis concludes that whether humans choose to fulfil this particular obligation, or attempt to reduce other forms of avoidable suffering, is a question of where humans can do the most good.

In a 2003 paper, the economist Tyler Cowen advocates, from a utility, rights and holistic perspective, for the policing of nature to reduce the predatory activity of certain animals to help their victims.

The transhumanist philosopher David Pearce, in his 2009 essay, "Reprogramming Predators", claims that predation is an immense source of suffering in the world and that a "biosphere without suffering is technically feasible". He argues for the phased extinction of carnivorous species using immunocontraceptives or "reprogramming" them using gene editing so that their descendants become herbivores. Pearce lists and argues against a number of justifications used by people who think that suffering caused by predation does not matter and that it should be conserved in its current state, including a "television-based conception of the living world", "[s]elective realism" and "[a]daptive empathy deficits".

In 2010, Jeff McMahan published "The Meat Eaters", an op-ed for the New York Times on predation as a moral issue, in which he argued that preventing the massive amounts of suffering and death caused by predation would be a good thing and that the extinction of carnivorous species could be instrumentally good if this could be achieved without inflicting "ecological upheaval involving more harm than would be prevented by the end of predation". McMahan received a number of objections to his arguments and responded to these in another op-ed published in the same year, "Predators: A Response". He later published his arguments as a chapter titled "The Moral Problem of Predation", in the 2015 book Philosophy Comes to Dinner.

Peter Vallentyne argues that it is permissible for humans to intervene to help prey in limited ways, if the cost to humans is minimal, but that we should not eliminate predators. In the same way that we aid humans in need, when the cost to humans is minimal, humans might help wild animals in limited circumstances.

Some ethicists have made concrete proposals for reducing or preventing predation, including stopping the reintroduction of predators in locations where they have previously gone extinct and removing predators from wild areas.

Environmental ethics

In 1984, the British ecologist Felicity A. Huntingford published "Some ethical issues raised by studies of predation and aggression", in which she discusses ethical issues and implications regarding the staging of artificial encounters for studies of predator-prey interactions.

In the context of ecology, predation is considered to play a crucial and necessary role in ecosystems. This has led some writers, such as Michael Pollan, to reject predation as being a moral problem at all, stating "predation is not a matter of morality or politics; it, also, is a matter of symbiosis". Under Aldo Leopold's land ethic, native predators, as crucial components of biotic communities, are considered important to conserve.

The environmental philosopher J. Baird Callicott asserts that the implication of animal rights theory, namely that we should protect animals from predators, would "[n]ot only [result in] the (humane) eradication of predators destroy the community, it would destroy the species which are the intended beneficiaries of this misplaced morality. Many prey species depend upon predators to optimize their populations." Holmes Rolston III views predation as an essential natural process and driver of evolution, that is a "sad good" to be respected and valued. Ty Raterman, an environmentalist, has argued that predation is something that can be lamented without implying that we have an obligation to prevent it.

The environmental ethicist William Lynn has argued that from a welfare perspective predation "is necessary for the well-being of predators and prey" and essential for the maintenance of the integrity of the ecological communities. Larry Rasmussen, a Christian environmental ethicist, has argued that predation is "not a pattern of morality we praise and advocate".

Other uses of the term

"Predation problem" can also refer to the predation of animals who belong to species considered valuable to humans for economic reasons or conservation, such as domestic sheep predation by coyotes, farmed salmon predation by seals, the predation of animals who are hunted for sport or food and cat predation of wild animals; culling or removal of predatory animals may be carried out to reduce such incidents.