Talk:Conservation biology

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Shouldn't this page be merged with Conservation ecology? There is no real difference between the two. Guettarda 00:23, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • There is a slight difference. If there is a merge then merge conservation ecology into this. Conservation biology is the more commonly used term amonst conservation proffesionals, and covers areas of conservation science outside of ecology (such as conservation genetics and conservation economics) This page is in my watchlist as I plan to do something with it. Sabine's Sunbird 01:01, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I suppose you're right - conservation biology is a broader category than conservation ecology. I still think that a good case could be made for merging conservation ecology into this page, since both articles are so thin. I suppose the better phrasing of this question would be: "Is there enough of a field of Conservation Ecology that is outside of the field of Conservation Biology that is should stand as a separate article". My feeling is no, I would like to know what other people think Guettarda 01:51, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  • My feeling is that this page covers "biodiversity conservation", not "conservation biology". Conservation biology is the scientific discipline that informs the actual practice of biodiversity conservation. I speak as someone with an MSc in Conservation. Flit 15:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with Flit's above observation. Conservation biology is a multidisciplinary science that draws from contributions as diverse as landscape ecology, molecular genetics to conservation policymaking and economics to address the issue of biological conservation. There are some interesting basic fundamental insights in conservation biology such as the species-area relationship, habitat fragmentation etc. and there are analytical tools often used in conservation biology such as the population viability analysis and the valuation of biodiversity. Details such as these need to be sketched out to adequately describe the field of conservation biology. Cheers, Splashprince 12:39, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Recent edits

  1. The material I reverted was a copyvio (it was cited as such even in the insertion).
  2. I am not sure I like where this page is going - "conservation biology" is not synonymous with "environmental conservation". Guettarda 29 June 2005 17:33 (UTC)
I agree. The page deals very little with conservation biology. The whole "Importance of Conservation" section doesn't belong here - perhaps it belongs in a broader page on conservation. This whole article probably needs to be re-written to address the discipline of Conservation Biology.--Margareta 22:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Full agreement here. It should deal with things like SLOSS debates, metapopulation theory, genetic bottlenecks, invasives, succession etc. Shyamal 02:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
I also agree. There's a lot here on general conservation or maybe sustainability, but very little science. Is anyone working on overhauling this page? If not, I may take a crack at it. Wingaling 02:37, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is. It's awfully quiet in here. Have at it!--Margareta 03:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
agree with some of the above comments. certainly the recitation of prizes is filler. i think there is a place for "importance of CONSERVATION BIOLOGY" but not just importance of conservation. this article is on my list of "to do" s but go ahead and start on it. lets go slowly and try to build a consensus. i will try to contribute to the editing. cheers. Anlace 03:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Expert tags and WikiProject Environment

I have updated the "Expert" tag to associate this page with Wikipedia:WikiProject Environment. The reasons for this have been more or less laid out in the discussions above. The "Expert" tag was originally added three months ago, but so far no experts have turned up to help us out.

Only the lead in this article actually has to do with Conservation Biology. The entire "Importance of Conservation Biology" section is really about the importance of conservation, and as such probably doesn't belong in this article. However, it is the only section that is consistently updated. The "Conservation Threats" section could be made relevant if more context was given on how Conservation Biology attempts to address those threats, but as currently written it is also not very relevant to the topic. Apart from the lead, there is no specific information about Conservation Biology per se. At minimum, this page should have:

A history of Conservation Biology
Important figures in Conservation biology
Short descriptions of the different disciplines involved in Conservation Biology, with wiki-links to full pages about them.

Information on important publications and organizations in Conservation Biology would also be helpful.--Margareta 17:23, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please create more "Wildlife of ....." articles for all countries.

.... and kindly contribute to these new articles when you get time, and request others too.

See Wildlife of India for reference.

Thanks

Atulsnischal 18:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Invitation for Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected areas of India & Conservation

If you are interested in Environment, Wildlife, Conservation and Nature etc. please join in to contribute, even starting off with making new stub class articles will be a great contribution.

Sincerely

Atulsnischal 16:36, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

We need senior administrators or people who are long in Wikipedia to help us with the templates and for other further helps. Details can be seen in its talk page. IT's urgent. We want this wkiproject to be added to the exsisting WP:IND banner. Amartyabag TALK2ME 05:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major cleanup

After reading over this page, I think that most of the material is irrelevant to Conservation Biology and may contain a lot of spam. I think this article would be better off having most of this removed, and giving the article a "Stub" tag. I don't want to draw anyone's wrath, but it also seems at this point that there isn't a whole lot of interest in this page. So I am going to "be bold" and start pruning extensively. If you don't like my edits, don't get mad, just put back what you think should be put back, and try and post here saying why it belongs here.--Margareta 19:14, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I have done a major cleanup of the page. Mostly I have tried to go one paragraph at a time. For my rationale for each edit, please see the History page.--Margareta 19:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
The article is quickly getting emasculated. Pruning should be more judicious and allow others to participate. At this point we have lost over half of the article. Many mass text blocks deleted contained important threads that will take someone a lot of time to restore. I would recommend placing cite needed tags in many places where text blocks were deleted, instead of blanket deletions.Anlace 20:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Pardon the expression, but you can't "emasculate" something that doesn't have any balls to begin with. I was aiming at more of a haircut (of long, shaggy hair, to be sure, but a haircut nevertheless)
Very little that was deleted was of any value or relevance to the topic. Of the few paragraphs that were uncited but actually had to do with Conservation Biology, I did add "citeneeded" tags rather than delete them. We "lost" over half the article because less than half of the article dealt with the topic of Conservation Biology.
The growing inclusion of material irrelevant to Conservation Biology, and the need to bring it back into focus, has been a topic mentioned on this page for over 18 months now, but no one has done anything about it. In addition, leaving in the irrelevant sections served as an invitation for people to add to those sections rather than improving the sections that dealt with Conservation Biology.
At least from here, the page can be expanded and improved within the framework of material that has a relationship to Conservation Biology, rather than having to work around the large quantities of irrelevant material.
Regardless, if you think there was something cut that was on-topic and belonged here, by all means restore it--hopefully improving it when you do! I edited in a way that I hoped would make it easy for people to restore paragraphs if necessary.--Margareta 20:43, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some material that could go back with some modifications

Here is some text that I deleted that actually may have some relevance to Conservation Biology, but needs to get cleaned up, have citations added, and be placed in better context before being returned to the page:

Current thinking favors the protection of entire ecological regions by the creation of “biosphere reserves.” Examples of such conservation areas include the Great Barrier Reef off Australia and Adirondack State Park in the United States. The importance of reconciling human use and conservation beyond the boundaries of parks has become another important issue.
  • Needs citations; does not belong in lead; could go in a section dealing with effects of habitat loss on biodiversity and the role of Conservation Biology in informing reserve design. Biosphere reserves are not defined here.
Fynbos example
While it is difficult to establish the net value of a species, a financial value often can be estimated.
In Cape Province, South Africa the native vegetation of the area is the fynbos, a type of shrub. The fynbos are able to survive long periods of drought, periodic fires, and poor soil conditions; the plants are harvested annually with annual a yield of about $19 billion. Recently exotic plants have threatened the endemic fynbos. The new plants grow larger; increasing the severity of periodic fires. More importantly they transpire more water; reducing the local streams to half their normal water flow.
Removing the exotic species will cost between $140 US and $830 US per hectare and $8 US per hectare to maintain every year after. Alternatively, a sewage purification plant would cost $135 million US to build and $2.6 million US per year to maintain. Desalination of surrounding coastal waters would cost four times as much.
  • This may have a place, but it's relationship to conservation biology isn't demonstrated and it needs a source. More likely it belongs in an article on ecological economics.

--Margareta 21:07, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good Work! And future steps?

I know Anlace didn't agree with all the edits I made, but I sure am glad I got her attention, because she's done a lot to improve the article.

I'd like to suggest now that the "Importance of biological diversity" and "Threats to biological diversity" are good now, and are as long as they should be for an article whose focus is Conservation Biology. While they both provide important cornerstones for discussing ConBio, neither should come to dominate the article.

What really needs work now is the "History Section," which also probably should not be more than 2-3 paragraphs long (and a lot of what is there about the history of conservation could be shortened to make room for information about the history of Conservation Biology).

Hopefully someone can add a section about the actual theory and practice of Conservation Biology. Maybe start by expanding upon what is already in the lead (not expanding the lead itself, but using the lead as a guide for additional sections). Specifically, this: "The term "conservation biology" refers to the application of science to the conservation of genes, populations, species, and ecosystems. Conservation biology is the scientific study of the phenomena that affect the maintenance, loss, and restoration of biological diversity."

There is basically no additional information in the article about this, although I think this should really be the meat and potatoes of the article.--Margareta 17:08, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Species loss

I have deleted the following sentence from the "Threats to Biological Diversity" section: "This figure is presumed additive to the 10 to 40 percent estimates of species loss, without global warming."

The use of the words "is presumed" (presumed by whom?) is a major red flag that this is POV. And when I followed the reference to the article abstract, I found information to suggest that the statement was not true. According to the abstract, the researchers estimated total species loss under different climate change scenarios; they did not separate out species loss from climate change from species loss due to other causes.

I cannot myself access the full article from home, so it's possible there is more to this than I can see. If you have access to the full article and it backs up the "additive" statement, please share with the rest of us!--Margareta 17:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted "expert" tag?

Why did the expert tag go away? This article is still in major need of expert help--it still contains nearly nothing about the science of Conservation Biology, only background. All I could find in the edit summary was "This tag is rather tired." Well, I'm tired of it, too--but only because no expert has come to help improve the article yet! Plus, I only yesterday linked the tag to the Ecology project, so I think we should allow the article to be part of that project for a little while before deleting the tag--plus it can't be "tired" after only a day. I'm putting it back.--Margareta 17:20, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

95 percent of wikipedia articles are in need of the expert tag by your standard then. The average article on wikipedia is poorly sourced and not nearly as far along as this article. the expert tag should be reserved for articles that need lots of cleanup and contain significant mis-information. Anlace 22:42, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Well... I'm not sure what you mean by "far along." Apart from the lead, there is almost nothing here about Conservation Biology. Honestly, the vast majority of articles on Wikipedia on biological topics are way beyond this one. Take away the filler, and the article would qualify as a stub. What we have here may be well-sourced now, but it is the equivalent of an article on medicine that only talks about the most prevalent diseases and why disease is bad.

Anyway, all I'm saying is, it just got added to the Ecology project a day ago. Let's give it a month, at least, to see if anyone takes an interest. I've also just posted a call for editors to the Society for Conservation Biology bulletin board, so maybe someone there will come and help add some substance here.--Margareta 23:02, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

I see you've deleted the tag again. I don't agree that the major work on this page is done. While I appreciate the work you've done on improving the article, it is only the beginning: the background. There is still no information on the actual science and practice of conservation biology. Admittedly, because conservation biology is such a broad, muti-disciplianry field, and encompasses so much of the values and history of the wider conservation movement, it can be difficult to define where the boundaries should be, and what exactly should be included. And the field is constantly expanding. But this is exactly why the expert tag was needed.
We've seen some really great work done here by someone who clearly has a lot of knowledge of a couple of aspects of conservation biology. What we need now is to get all the rest of it covered.
I'm sorry Anlace couldn't bring him/herself to honor my simple requesst to leave the tag up for just one month. I'm not going to replace it, to avoid a revert war. But perhaps, in the interest of good faith, they might consider restoring it?--Margareta 18:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thoughts

  • "Presently the Earth is undergoing the Holocene Mass Extinction, an era of unprecedented species extinctions" - what, greater than the Permian extinction, where 95% of all species died?
  • The whole thing is somewhat weak and choppy, and needs copyediting.
  • Evolutionary and Ecological Genetics, the course I took last term, will come in handy here. The key science is that in small populations, genetic drift dominates, and the effect of natural selection is weakened: disadvantageous mutations can gather and become fixed in the population, and temporarily neutral variations - even slightly advantageous ones - can easily be lost. In captive breeding programs, this can be helped with careful management and transfers between zoos, to increase the effective population size. Crashes also makke the founder effect come into play, long after they recover. The population can be rescued by gene flow from other populations. Adam Cuerden talk 21:32, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Re: Holocene mass extinction. I read an article about this recently; I wish I could remember where. They were comparing current extinction rates to the Permian, and saying that even though a greater percent of species went extinct then, a greater number are going extinct now, simply because there are so many more species now. So "unprecedented" is relative in this sense. Perhaps whoever added the source (was it Anlace?) could verify it and see exactly what it says about the "unprecedented" nature of the current extinction. If it is in number, the sentence could read "an era of species extinctions unprecedented in number" or simply omit "era" and say "an unprecedented number of species extinctions."--Margareta 21:42, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Invitation to contribute

Thanks to Margaretafor the invitation to help with this article. I'm currently super busy, but a brief glance at the article suggested to me that one uncontroversial area that the article could be dramatically improved is an examination of the various fields that comprise conservation biology - conservation genetics, habitat management, reserve design, endangered species management, environemental economics, legal aspects, population ecology etc. Basically, it needs to deal with some of the science and how particular branches of other disciplines (such as population biology) affect conservation biology.

I have to many real world commitments over the next three weeks (I'm just begining a PhD in a realetd field) but I'd ba happy to contribute after that. Sabine's Sunbird talk 22:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)