The next era of conservation is one in which the venture of conserving resources is a forethought, not a simple pursuit undertaken only when convenient, as work done on a full stomach. The next era is one in which conservation enjoys relevance in society for the goods and services it yields, for the foods it helps produce, and for the activities it enhances. Due to its societal relevance, conservation in the future will include funding models and approaches that sufficiently meet the funding needs of species and citizens alike.
Conservation’s future must include significant collaboration with strong partnerships, co-producing outcomes that are achieved at meaningful scales and that are durable, lasting for long periods on the landscape, and built with the notion of sustainability in mind.
What a luxury it is to imagine the future of conservation and contemplate the next era of conservation. It’s a luxury both due to the opportunity to consider how we humans might change our approaches and thus the results of our conservation efforts, and it’s also a luxury that we as beings are gifted with the power to imagine. Imagination is considered a uniquely human experience due to its role in innovation, empathy, and complex problem-solving, and the specific evolutionary path that led to its sophisticated capabilities in humans.
So often, as we imagine future scenarios or when we are granted opportunities to reconsider tools, approaches, and innovations, we place an unnecessary burden of original thoughts and ideas on our thinking. We often assume there must be a novel, not yet tried, approach that, if adopted, could yield better outcomes and perhaps in more efficient ways.
In Steal Like an Artist, author Austin Kleon argues that the pressure to be completely original is an unnecessary and crippling burden. He posits that no idea is 100 percent original and that all creative work is a remix of existing ideas and influences. By embracing this concept, creators can “steal” from a wide variety of sources, combining them in new and unique ways that reflect their own perspectives.
The process of reimagining conservation’s next era is not immune to the crippling burden of originality we impose upon our thinking. If there ever was a time to reflect on conservation’s roots and the principles that were crafted to guide it, that time is now. The foundations of the institution of conservation are not static structures. They are more like a trail system, built by those who walked before us. Conservation’s journey is more akin to a set of waypoints, milestones, or trail blazes. It’s our job to adjust the route, not abandon the journey. The path forward calls for a broader conservation vision of one that values whole landscapes and the people who work and live on them. It means building policies that serve both wildlife and the communities that have long stewarded our shared natural resources.
As we reflect on the relatively short history of modern colonial conservation, thousands of years of related Indigenous paradigms and approaches notwithstanding, it’s easy to identify key elements that formed its foundation. Among these are pivotal pieces of legislation, such as the Lacey Act of 1900 and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1913, which have played a crucial role in shaping our work. Some philosophies and paradigms are foundational to our work, notions like the Fair Chase Ethic of 1888, Theodore Roosevelt’s “Conservation as a National Duty” speech in 1908, and of course the Leopold Land Ethic. There are also foundational elements of conservation in the 1930 American Game Policy, the 1973 North American Wildlife Policy, and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.
Common themes consistently found throughout conservation’s historical documents include a desire for additional funding and struggles with the low social relevance of conservation. Any imagined future for conservation would do well to include effective funding models as well as effective ways to better connect people to the landscapes. Additionally, the enterprise of conservation is often portrayed as mutually exclusive with economic enterprises. Pitting these two against one another will continue to divide and promote blame and create adversaries of factions with more to gain from allegiance than from hostility.
Ultimately, the nature of the challenge before us is to define our future through the distillation of relevant and meaningful elements scattered in time and space, include contemporary approaches like collaboration and integration, and create novel tools and approaches like innovative funding models and unique partnerships. Despite our failings, we do not need to redefine the foundational elements of conservation—we simply need to reimagine the ways in which they are implemented. We need to reflect from our past, draw from our present, and innovatively reckon with our future to craft a broader conservation vision, a vision that is anchored in concepts like sustainability, collaboration, public trust, and durability, among others.
