To give up preserving nature in its “pristine wilderness,” conservationists must come up with a variety of alternative goals. Making these goals is not as simple as it may seem. The goals must be applied to the real world with budgets and other limitations. Also, unlike conserving nature in its originality, which can applied to all situations, not one single goal can be used for all preservation of nature.
Some people believe that people have a moral obligation to treat land, animals, plants, and water the same we would want to be treated. These people, deep ecologists, claim that if humans fail to protect the environment, then humans are taking away the environment’s “rights.” For example, animals have rights to live as they naturally would, like cats roaming around freely. However, this conflicts with conservation because some animals live by killing/hunting other species, which may be heading to extinction. To prevent animals from causing other species to go extinct, conservationists will have to step in and diminish the predator’s population. This conflict makes it difficult to have biodiversity and to protect animal’s rights. Besides animal’s rights, there are also the rights of nonliving aspects of nature, which cannot be based off animal’s rights, is another difficulty in conservation. I believe that the goal of “protecting the rights of other species” should not be concentrated on too much unless it involves a species going extinct–goal 3. All animals should be able to behave as they would in the wilderness, and humans should only observe and make sure no species will go extinct. I believe that eventually the species food chain will balance out.
Also, this goes hand in hand with goal 2-protecting the megafauna-because we do not want larger species like pandas and elephants to go extinct, but we do want them to be able to live in their natural habitats. To ensure that megafauna do not go extinct, conservationists need to work with others instead of trying to push their ideals onto others. For example, the illegal trade of ivory diminishes the population of elephants in Africa. It was first illegal to cull elephants, but then Africa soon made it legal, which sparked a fiery debate. By focusing on protecting the elephants from illegal ivory trade, other species that would be affected by the elephants disappearance are forgotten. Conservationists should work goal two and goal three together, because protecting the megafauna will also help protect other species connected to it, as well as prevent extinction of the megafauna and other species.
Protecting all species will ensure genetic diversity and biodiversity, goals 4 and 5. Conservationists want to have as much diversity in the environment as possible. However, the complexity of diversity makes it difficult to conserve all. Some species are not as well liked as others, so its disappearance may go unnoticed; however, it is still a part of nature and contributes to diversity. Biodiversity involves so many aspects of nature that to protect it all seems impossible. However, I believe that biodiversity will be protected as long as we protect nature from being completely destroyed. From the looks of it, biodiversity would be the main goal of conservation with all other goals stated beneath it. This is due to the vague term of biodiversity that involves species and landscape.
