[MCN] Two scientists urge conservationists to get real about conservation

[Lance Olsen]

Mora (2014) reviews “recent studies showing how the issue of population growth has been downplayed and trivialized among scientific fields.” 

He argues that human population size, “...despite being directly or indirectly linked to the deterioration of ecological systems and a key factor for the success of conserving species and ecosystems, has been rarely considered and in fact ‘trivialized or ignored’ by much of the conservation biology community.” 

Mora, C. 2014. Revisiting the environmental and socioeconomic effects of population growth: a fundamental but fading issue in modern scientific, public, and political circles. Ecology and Society 19(1): 38. 
<<http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06320-190138>>

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“In the wake of August’s Great Elephant Census, which revealed a precipitous decline in numbers throughout Africa, there were the usual calls from researchers for more and better data. Only if we know where and how many of each species there are, this argument goes, can we hope to conserve them. 

“This is nonsense.

“Better data will not save elephants, rhinos or any other species. An enormous number of individuals, academic institutions, local, state and national governments, and multinational and non-governmental organizations have been collecting, assimilating and organizing such data for decades, essentially fiddling while our biological heritage burns.”

Nature 11 October 2016
It’s time to get real about conservation
Aaron M. Ellison <https://www.nature.com/articles/538141a#auth-Aaron_M_-Ellison-Aff1> 
https://www.nature.com/articles/538141a
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