Conservators of Experience

Extract

At a recent talk on the global extinction crisis, prominent botanist and conservation biologist Peter Raven, in an aside, fondly reminisced about his boyhood plant-collecting trips in then semiwild Napa County, California. As I listened, I reflexively thought of my own early rambles in the Adiron-dacks of New York State. At the end of the talk, a member of the audience asked, “How can young people today have the experiences with nature that you had? Where will the Peter Ravens of the future come from?” This is a profoundly important issue that we biologists should consider.

Over the last several decades, the significance of biodiversity, and the need for its protection, has emerged as one of the organizing principles of biology. The selection of articles in this and other scientific journals reflects a large and growing research effort that explicitly addresses many aspects of biodiversity loss and protection. Even research on traditional topics of “pure” biology often includes the conservation implications of results.