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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.[1] Evidence-based conservation seeks to use high quality scientific evidence to make conservation efforts more effective.

Not to be confused with Conservatism.

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.[2]

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.

[18]

Conservationists: The conservationists, led by future President 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.[19] 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.[20]

Theodore Roosevelt

Preservationists: Preservationists, led by (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.

John Muir

Barton, Gregory A. Empire, Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism, (2002), covers British Empire

Clover, Charles. The End of the Line: How overfishing is changing the world and what we eat. (2004) Ebury Press, London.  0-09-189780-7

ISBN

Haq, Gary, and Alistair Paul. Environmentalism since 1945 (Routledge, 2013).

Jones, Eric L. "The History of Natural Resource Exploitation in the Western World," Research in Economic History, 1991 Supplement 6, pp 235–252

McNeill, John R. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century (2000).

A history of conservation in New Zealand

For Future Generations, a Canadian documentary on conservation and national parks