The Naked Ape Is Still an Ape: Contradictions in Conservation Biology

Abstract

The scientific discipline known as Conservation Biology was established in the early 1980s with the aim of becoming a tool for the management of biodiversity and ecosystems on the planet. The reality today is that there is no consensus among researchers even as to which species and spaces we should protect and how or what are the ecosystem services that we should preserve. I believe that Environmental Thinking is seriously affecting Conservation Biology. The two most influential schools in environmental philosophy thought have been land ethics and deep ecology. In both, especially in deep ecology, we still consider human beings as separate from nature and “bad” from a moral point of view.Intrinsic values beliefs oblige us to avoid any extinction, even if this is a necessary part of the evolutionary process. Both shortcomings are seriously limiting our ability to focus on the real problem. We should overcome the man–nature dichotomy by understanding that we are neither more nor less than a part of it. When we talk about protecting nature, we are actually talking about protecting human–nature habitats, maintaining conditions that make life possible for our species in a world full of opportunities and living beings, including ourselves.

1. Introduction

The scientific discipline known as Conservation Biology was established in the early 1980s [1] with the aim of becoming a tool that would provide the appropriate knowledge and techniques for the management of biodiversity and ecosystems on the planet. The reality today is that there is no consensus among researchers even regarding the basic questions that allow a consistent application of this discipline [2,3,4]. The discrepancies are manifested in many fundamental aspects. Thus, there are discrepancies as to which species we should conserve [5,6,7,8,9], which spaces we should protect and how [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20] or what are the ecosystem services that we should preserve [21,22]. Of course, there are also doubts about the real contribution that this discipline has made so far to nature conservation [2,23]. The explanations offered for these abundant and profound discrepancies are generally based on the inherent complexity of the object of study (very complex ecosystems with a huge network of interactions), the difficulty of which requires multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary approaches for its adequate understanding [1,24].

Even though I am aware that there is no such thing as an objective science devoid of conditioning, I believe that, in the case of Conservation Biology, these conditionings are of great importance and their consequences go much less noticed by the practicing scientists of conservation of what they should, affecting in an extreme way the development and application of this young scientific discipline. This is worrying because all the available environmental data [25] seem to indicate that we are indeed at a crucial moment for the future survival and well-being of our species. The main objective of this paper is to discuss the potential deleterious effect of environmental thinking on the practice of Conservation Biology.

2. A Science of Crisis: Conservation Biology

At the dawn of the 21st century, the concern for the conservation of the diversity of life has gone from being a minority attitude, dependent on a certain cultural level and a certain sensitivity, to a concern shared by a large number of citizens, at least in the first world. This fact is not trivial, since it entails a radical change in the image we have of the world and of human beings. Until almost the end of the 20th century, the dominant vision presented an increasingly better future, with more longevity, better quality of life, greater scientific knowledge and technological development that would facilitate the life and proliferation of our species. However, the environmental crisis and in particular the climate change crisis has stopped that belief. Now, we see the future as something uncertain and rather negative [26], where not only does it seem that the problems that worried us are not going to be fixed, but we discover new ones, generated to a large extent by our own attitude, which terrifies us and drive us away from that idyllic vision in which we felt so comfortable.

In the industrial societies born from the technological revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, it was a question of creating a device that would allow us to control the dangers coming from nature (epidemics, bad harvests, plagues, climates, etc.); the danger was external. Today, a large part of the risk is internal; itcomes from the very devices of industrial society that we have invented (contamination of the food chain, accidents in nuclear power plants, climate change, collapse of computer communication systems, bacteriological attacks, depletion of resources, etc.). This is what Beck [26] calls the “risk society”: dangers and threats internal to the techno-natural device in which we inhabit.

Conservation Biology is a recent synthetic scientific discipline that deals with studying the causes of the loss of biological diversity at all its levels (genetic, specific and ecosystemic) and how to minimize this loss. To this end, it integrates contributions from very different disciplines, such as ecology, genetics, biogeography, behavioral biology, political science, sociology, anthropology, etc. [1,27]. Three principles have been proposed to guide the development of Conservation Biology [28]:(1) Evolution is the only mechanism capable of explaining biodiversity patterns, so responses to conservation problems must be generated within the evolutionary framework. (2) Ecological processes are dynamic and do not remain in equilibrium (at least not indefinitely), being subject to the regulation of variable external processes. (3) Human beings are part of ecological systems so human activities should be considered in biological conservation planning.

Basically, the practical responses to this growing concern to conserve nature have been developed in two complementary ways, i.e., the protection of spaces and the protection of species.

3. Environmental Thinking

In 1967, Lynn White Jr. [29] published a fundamental article on the development of what waslater called Environmental Philosophy. In it, he argued that the roots of the environmental crisis we are suffering, clearly Western in origin, sink into our way of understanding and being in the world. Human ecology, therefore, would be deeply conditioned by our beliefs about our essence and our destiny, that is, by our religion.The belief that man and nature are different things and that the second reaches its meaning only when used by the first, together with the linear conception of time, where progress is the inevitable path, would be the basic ingredients of a way of understanding the world that has been revealed as dangerous to our future. In this study I am interested in considering the effect of Western religions and environmental thinking on Conservation Biology. Other religions such as Hinduism or Buddhism have their own philosophy about the natural world that may be affecting the conservation of biodiversity on the ground level, and would be interesting for future studies, but in this paper we focus on the Western world.

Probably, White did not think then that in a short time we were indeed going to witness the resurgence of a new religious sentiment that proposes to change man–nature relationships: environmental thinking.

It is curious to see how the use of language clearly reveals even unspoken speeches. Thus, we call “Sanctuaries” (for example, the famous “Hawk Mountain Sanctuary” in Kempton, PA, USA) those areas with high diversity that we want to protect, or “Last Paradises” which seem to us to be examples of nature not affected by human action. In 2007, an environmental group announced the inauguration of the world’s first sanctuary dedicated to the “Virgin of Ecology” in northern Spain (http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/. Accessed on 22 April 2018).

The religious connotations of environmental thinking are varied and sometimes seem expressly sought by their authors, such as the “eight commandments” of deep ecology that Naess and Sessions brought back from the desert (Death Valley in California), after a long meditation retreat clearly reminiscent of Moses [30].

3.1. Land Ethics

Aldo Leopold, with his A Sand County Almanac [31], is seen by many authors as the father of modern environmental thought [32,33]. A Sand County Almanac is a collection of essays of a symbolic and markedly literary nature, without excessive scientific or philosophical rigor. They are intended to suggest that the approach to the environment has to be holistic in nature. What Leopold advocates is a review of our moral attitudes including not only man and his societies but the entire system of living beings and the earth. Influenced especially by what was then the young science of Ecology, Leopold is more interested in the processes in which the earth is involved than in the collection of things and living beings themselves.

In his thinking, there is no static earth in equilibrium but rather in continuous changes that constitute evolutionary processes. However, he emphasizes, not all changes are good, so that the human development of tools, agriculture and techniques in general has disrupted the earth system, introducing changes with unprecedented speed and consequences. Perhaps Leopold’s best known ethical maxim is “a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community, it is wrong when it tends otherwise” [31].

3.2. Deep Ecology

The term “deep ecology” was coined by the founding father of the so-called movement, the Scandinavian philosopher Arne Naess [34]. Emphasizing the importance of interconnections in ecological systems, deep ecology insists that attention to the parts demands attention to the whole: we cannot hope to tackle environmental problems without looking more deeply at all the influences, including in particular our own attitudes and beliefs. Deep ecology identifies two opposite and irreconcilable worldviews, one the most traditional, linked to Western Christian thought referred to by White [31], and the other radically opposite, which would be the “deep” vision.

Deep ecology has an overtly religious dimension; Buddhist, Taoist, and American Indian beliefs, as well as some aspects of Christianity, have influenced his writings. According to Belshaw [32], the influences of Spinoza, Whitehead, Heidegger and Kuhn can be traced in his writings. The relationships with the anarchism of the early twentieth century and, especially, with the thought on the wild nature of Thoreau and Leopold, can also be found. The influence of deep ecology in practice is also impressive. Greenpeace is probably the best known pressure group marked by deep ecology thinking.

The most relevant characteristics of deep ecology thinking are its metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical holism, with the uncompromising defense of the intrinsic value of living beings and also of the processes that surround life. Regarding metaphysical holism, it should be noted that for deep ecology, the existence of the whole is more real and important than that of the parts; that is, an ecosystem is more real and a priority than the living beings that compose it.In this way, deep ecology establishes some kind of ontological primacy in nature. An epistemological holistic is also defended in which it is postulated that we cannot have knowledge of the parts of a system if we do not understand the whole [35]. Ethical holism considers that ecosystems are worthy of moral consideration, having intrinsic value and therefore what happens to them is important regardless of theireffects on human beings.

Despite the holistic approach to their philosophy and their statement of opposition to the vision defined as traditional, which conceives man and nature as separate realities, deep ecologists do not seem to hide that their vision classifies the human being as destructive to nature. Nature is considered a good thing, the parts of which, all intrinsically valuable, we should conserve and respect. Obviously, this vision necessarily includes a clear separation between man and nature where the former represents generally evil and the latter good [32]. The claim that nature is wise and there is no evil in it [36] is part of “deep” thinking.

4. Discussion

The influences of the different schools of environmental philosophy are perfectly identifiable in the presuppositions of Conservation Biology from its very origin. Thus, the most influential authors of this scientific discipline have never hidden their ascription to one or another school of thought, deriving from their moral principles the basic objectives that Conservation Biology, called “crisis science”, should fulfill.

Edward O. Wilson, inventor among other things of the term Biodiversity, and one of the most influential authors in the field, in his book The Future of Life [37] dedicates a whole chapter to a fiery defense of environmental ethics whose roots he identifies in Thoreau [38]. All his writings contain repeated references to ethical thoughts that could be classified as close to the ethics of the earth or even, in certain respects, to deep ecology. In the book Creation: Let’s Save Life on Earth [39], an allegation is made in epistolary form to the connection of religious thought with the management of biological diversity on the planet, relating beliefs in God with the need for preserve his work from human destruction, wrapping it in a field of ethical imperatives.

The same can be said of Michael E. Soulé, founder of the discipline of Conservation Biology and who defines it as a new state in the application of science to conservation problems, studying the biology of species, communities and ecosystems disturbed by human action. Its main objective would be to provide principles and tools to preserve biological diversity [1]. This author defends that ethical norms are a genuine part of Conservation Biology, as they are in all disciplines that have “missions”, in this case, according to Soulé, saving the planet. For this reason, the author defends the idea that Conservation Biology must be understood as a science of “crisis” and its objective is to “save” the biological diversity “remnant” after human destruction. The ethical postulates that he defends are clearly, as he refers, those derived from “deep ecology”. Soulé affirms that the ethical principles expressed in Naess [34] are those that should govern the ethical behavior of conservation biologists.

However, this ethic (or quasi-religion) does not overcome the basic problems of Western thought that White [29] pointed out. Indeed, he again underlies the idea that man and nature are essentially different entities, only that the process of denaturing man and humanizing nature has reversed traditional moral values without fixing the underlying problem. It continues to defend implicitly that man and nature are separate entities and explicitly that Nature is “good” and man and his actions are “bad”.

The conservation of spaces has been the cornerstone of conservation policies and the oldest of its expressions. For Wilson, the definition of nature that we must conserve is: “the part of the original environment and its forms of life that persists after suffering the impact of human action, it encompasses everything that on planet Earth does not need us and is autonomous” [39]. This definition fits perfectly with the concept of “lost paradise” with obvious religious connotations. This vision emphasizes the idea that only in the absence of man, the bearer of a kind of original sin, can nature fully express itself. After an analysis of the extinction rates caused by human action, Wilson [37] concludes that the only and weak hope for biodiversity will be the increase of the areas of the earth excluded from human use. This view that the natural is only found outside the human sphere of influence is shared by many other authors [33,40,41,42,43,44,45,46].

For Soulé [1], evolution is morally good because it is the process that generates diversity and allows life to adapt, and since life is morally good, it follows that evolution is also good. Thus, he considers it an ethical imperative to encourage evolutionary processes to continue “in as many natural habitats undisturbed by man as possible.” However, there are no compelling reasons to consider that what must be conserved is exclusively the environment away from human influences [9]. If the objective of conservation is to allow evolution to continue to have adequate and sufficient raw material to generate biological diversity, it does not immediately follow that this should only occur in environments far from human influences.

The dichotomy between non-human and human spaces is not only difficult to justify from ethics defined as holistic and that defend the idea that all parts and processes of nature have intrinsic value, but also has clear religious reminiscences that point to our departure of paradise for being unworthy to enjoy it. Our sinful and unnatural desires for knowledge have led us to bite the apple of technology and with it we have been forever deprived of the enjoyment of the paradise that will never again be our home, because it is now destined exclusively for innocent and pure beings. However, actually, the declaration of more natural parks around the word is not going to stop climate change, contamination of the food chain, accidents in nuclear power plants, depletion of resources, etc.

In the aforementioned article by Soulé [1], a series of ethical postulates are presented that, in the author’s opinion, form an indispensable part of Conservation Biology and that affect the ideas of species protection, the second basic pillar of the biodiversity management actions, together with the protection of spaces. The main affirmation of this ethical imperative is that biodiversity has an intrinsic value regardless of its possible instrumental or utilitarian value. According to the author, this is the fundamental postulate of Conservation Biology. By emphasizing the inherent value of non-human lives he distances himself from the classic dualistic and exploitative vision that has characterized Western thought [29]. The coincidences again with the postulates of deep ecology which are evident here [34]. Species have a value in themselves, a non-conferred and non-revocable value that conditions our moral attitude towards them.

From this ethical postulate it follows as a corollary that species extinction is bad [1,37,39,47]. Soulé specifies, however, that Conservation Biology does not claim to condemn extinction per se. He clarifies that “natural” extinctions are either indifferent or morally good because they are part of the evolutionary process (which he had already qualified as “good”, hence the need for clarification) that substitutes a pool of genes that are less well adapted for better ones. The bottom line of natural extinctions, catastrophes aside, he insists, does not reduce biodiversity, which thrives on the appearance of new species. However, he clarifies; natural extinctions are rare events on the human scale. Of the hundreds of vertebrate extinctions that have occurred over the past few hundred years, only very few, if any, have been natural extinctions [1]. However, anthropogenic extinctions are increasing exponentially [28,46].

The obvious conclusion of the intrinsic value attributed to species is that their disappearance forever is an undesirable loss, that is, it is bad. It is more difficult to argue that this evil is transformed into goodness if the cause of its disappearance is not human. The argument that, since something has an intrinsic value and is considered good, this intrinsic value can be varied by an action of an extrinsic agent seems weak. Surely it would be a stronger argument to say that whatever the cause of the disappearance of the carrier of intrinsic value, this disappearance is always bad news. In fact, in practice the goal of Conservation Biology, living up to its name, is to conserve all species, i.e., stopping the extinction processes without dwelling too long, in fact, on finding out whether or not the cause of extinction is directly related to human activity. Therefore, the strict application of this ethical postulate would lead Conservation Biology to a clear contradiction with its principles of always acting in an evolutionary context.

Soulé [1], as a consequence of what has been said so far, postulates that ecological complexity is alsogood. Like other previous postulates, and in the words of Soulé, this postulate expresses a preference for the natural over the artificial, and although it recognizes that human actions could create ecological systems with high diversity, it dispatches this inconvenience with a “but that ecological diversity will be more apparent than real” [1] without any quotation, example or argument to clarify why this should be the case.

The ascription of intrinsic values to both species and complete systems forces us to adopt policies for the indefinite maintenance of these systems and species as they are and where they are, contradicting evolutionary knowledge and establishing for conservation biology the unrealizable and probably undesirable goal of ending extinctions on the planet.

Underlying the idea of eradication of exotic species is, beside potential new diseases or disruptive effects onecosystems, the concern for the genetic “purity” of our species or local varieties. Again, by endowing species with an intrinsic value, we are forced to defend that value by keeping it in the state in which it is found forever. However, many authors have pointed out that the evidence for the importance of alien species in biodiversity loss remains to be demonstrated and has probably been highly overrated, noting that perhaps we should not judge species by their origin but rather by the positive or negative consequences they have on our interests, in a clear return to more utilitarian approaches [47].

After reviewing environmentalist ideologies, as well as their influences on the development of science and conservation practice, we have detected many contradictions arising from the application of ethical principles both from land ethics and, to a greater extent, from deep ecology. These contradictions or weak arguments have to do fundamentally with the failed idea of putting an end to the man–nature dichotomy, which actually becomes an inversion of values. As a consequence, in the two main environmentalist ideologies, the man–nature dichotomy is maintained, with the same or more force than in the “traditional Western thought”.

This dichotomy permeates the practice of Conservation Biology. Only in this way is it understood that it is defended that the nature that must be protected is limited to those areas of the world where human influence is less evident, and therefore that those areas with a greater human presence are considered lacking interest from the point of view of the biodiversity. The policy of human exclusion from natural parks has generated real problems and decreased levels of biodiversity in many areas that looked “natural” but in reality depended on continued human activity for their operation. In the same way, it has limited interest in the study and management of biodiversity in “human parks” where, in the opinion of some authors, this biodiversity should not be present.

It is true that not all the conservation policies assume this dichotomy. Probably the better example is the Man and Biosphere Program (MAB) of UNESCO and all the derivations of these applied philosophies of biodiversity conservation [48]. Socioecology, for example, defends a different and interesting approach to these problems, although mainly limited to developing countries. Here, we do not intend to analyze all the different approaches to preserving biodiversity, but only the effect of Environmental Thinking on the young discipline of Conservation Biology.

Unfortunately, among practitioners of Conservation Biology it is much more common to adopt the environmental thinking approaches, particularly deep ecology ideology, as recommended by its founders [1,37]. For example, in two of the most relevant scientific journals in the field of Conservation Biology, i.e., Biological Conservation and Conservation Biology, only since 2020 have several papers been published supporting the deep ecology approach as the only acceptable way to “save the planet” [49,50,51], including spirituality and ethics in the practice of Conservation Biology. Authors still defend that no change would be possible if we do not accept intrinsic values in all non-human beings, and we were in communication and communion with non-human organisms, following some aspect of Zen Buddhism.

Personally, I quite agree with the analysis by White [29] and other authors [52,53] on the foundations of Western thought as the first cause of the environmental crisis, and therefore we should rethink them. However, I do not believe that religious thought, with its spiritual load and absence of rational criticism, is the right answer to the environmental crisis. We should overcome the man–nature dichotomy by understanding that we are neither more nor less than a part of it. When we talk about protecting nature, we are actually talking about protecting human–nature habitats, maintaining conditions that make life possible for our species in a world full of opportunities and living beings, including ourselves.

Probably the very name Conservation Biology needs to be revised for its anti-evolutionary connotations. In the recent past, declarations of protected areas and species have been a successful strategy, playing a crucial role on many occasions. Perhaps now we should focus much more on the effects on biodiversity of agricultural, livestock and industrial practices, as well as energy production systems, and how to develop these necessary practices in a good way to promote biodiversity instead of destroying it. In other words, we have to work outside the fences of natural parks and with many more species than those that are in danger of extinction. We have to do thisunder the evolutionary framework and without pretending that each species must remain forever as it is and where it is now. Translocations, reintroductions and other active conservation actions will be used more in the future, accepting that not all human actions are bad for biodiversity by definition. In the end, what we need is not a new religion, but more data and scientific insights focused on managing global biodiversity to stay alive.