Coming to Understanding: Developing Conservation Through Incremental Learning

Abstract

"Lessons in conservation are often seen as resulting from cycles of over-exploitation and subsequent depletion of resources, followed by catastrophic consequences of shortage and starvation, and finally, development of various strategies, including privatization of the commons, to conserve remaining resource stocks. While this scenario has undoubtedly occurred on many occasions, we suggest that it is not the only means by which people develop conservation practices and concepts. There are other pathways leading to ecological understanding and conservation, which act at a range of scales and levels of complexity. These include: lessons from the past and from other places, perpetuated and strengthened through oral history and discourse; lessons from animals, learned through observation of migration and population cycles, predator effects, and social dynamics; monitoring resources and human effects on resources (positive and negative), building on experiences and expectations; observing changes in ecosystem cycles and natural disturbance events; trial and error experimentation and incremental modification of habitats and populations. Humans, we believe, are capable of building a sophisticated conservation ethic that transcends individual species and resources. When conservation knowledge, practices and beliefs are combined, this can lead to increasingly greater sophistication of ecological understanding and the continued encoding of such knowledge in social institutions and worldview."