The beginnings of modern nature conservation

The first known conservation law was enacted as early as 1640 for the prohibition of dear hunting on Rhode Island in North America. White settlers equipped with firearms had penetrated this previously untouched wilderness and shot at nearly anything, that came before their guns. The insular situation, which made the flight impossible for most animals, had almost become fatal for the local deer population.
In North America, the possession of firearms was already allowed at that time for almost everyone. The resulting sprawling hunts were not just for food, but a number of enterprising newcomers there also traded in the flesh, hides and skins of their preys. As early as the end of the 17th century, they had pushed the American beavers, and later also the local bisons, to the verge of extinction, whereby the rapid decline of the dependent Indian tribes was initiated. An important expert of the North American Indians, the former lawyer and later painter George Catlin (1796-1872), was therefore one of the first to demand the protection of their common habitats and other special natural landscapes. A few decades later, as a child from scottish immigrants, the american author and naturalist John Muir (1838-1914) achieved in 1864 a regional protection status for the Yosemite natural area, which expanded at his instigation in 1906 thanks to US President Roosevelt, and was then designated as a national park. Muir remained until his death, first president of the very influential nature conservation association in the United States, the Sierra Club, founded 1892 by him with some colleagues and scientists.
Unlike in North America, hunting in Europe was for long time largely reserved to the nobility, except for the hunting of small animals, such as birds, rodents etc. The hunting by the aristocrats was at first a social activity with strict hierarchic rules, whereby the hunting trophies should not surpass those of the senior nobles in the respective hunting excursions. Because there were not too many intensely hunting representatives of the high nobility, the effects of this hunting, with the exception of those on predators mercilessly pursued as food competitors, usually remained within limits. Therefore, and because most of the countries there were largely subdivided into untouchable and protected private lands of the church and nobility, nature conservation in Europe came up a later, than in North America. Only when the hunting privileged were seriously concerned about the hunting trophies they cherished, in view of populations of valuable game species dwindling due to overhunting, as was the case with the Alpine ibex in particular, considerable interest in nature conservation started growing in Europe.

The worrying decline in its populations led in 1914 to the establishment of one of the first national parks in Europe. Soon after, this conservation concept was exported to distant colonies and implemented there by colonial rulers. Conservation in Europe and in the countries colonized from there, goes back to the aristocratic leisure activities on the old continent. This explains both the focus of nature conservation projects until today, and the similarities of former feudal hunting grounds for the purpose of conserving valuable wildlife stocks for exclusive hunting by the ruling class, with current nature reserves. Both are similarly protected against intrusions by the surrounding populations. The biggest differences between the feudal hunting grounds of the time and today’s nature reserves and national parks are due to the social development since then. The latter are partly open to non-noble, if only predominantly wealthy visitors, who mostly go hunting for pictures and return home with snapshots and film sequences of wild animals as trophy substitutes. Besides them, many private “nature reserves” offer until today all sorts of hunting safaris up to big game hunting against good payment. The almost fluid transition between former nobility hunting territories and today’s conservation reserves may also explain the draconian punishments, that poachers are facing in many countries today, and which are often more severe, than those for violent crimes on humans. Even death penalty, the former capital punishment for poachers in many lands of the European nobility, has indirectly survived in some places. As an example, national parks in southern Africa often use military force against poaching. Especially on the side of the poachers generally driven by poverty, this causes several deaths, while their rich instigators usually get away with it.

Meeting place for elites

Since noblemen don´t defend their honor anymore on battlefields, at tournaments or duels, they started following the example of their ladies and professed their inherited status by public charity to the needy. Charity soon became kind of an obligation within large parts of the aristocracy, which by tradition, is closely associated with the church. It also became increasingly popular within the bourgeoisie, which was proud of itself and wanted to show it. As public authorities took over more and more charitable activities from the churches, high society partly turned towards the emerging nature conservation. There, both its widespread passion for hunting and its selective appreciation of certain animals such as horses, dogs, ferrets and birds of prey, as well as their preference for large natural landscapes with stately wild fauna, could be played out as evidence of its connection to nature, and combined with meetings among like-minded people in adequate settings. From the very beginning, nature conservation in Europe has been a popular platform for aristocrats and other landowners, for the aspiring bourgeoisie as well as for some well-connected and ambitious intellectuals and artists. In the beginning, nature conservation mainly protected male hunting interests. Soon afterwards, well-off ladies and gentlemen joined this fashionable trend and founded the bird protection movement therein. One of the goals of bird protection was to bring outstanding vocal artists under captivity over the freezing winters, and then continue to enjoy their voices. Many conservation organizations emerged from a bird protection association, such as the nature conservation federation of Germany, which originally was established in 1899 as the Association for Bird Protection. After the birds, nature conservation in Europe developed a special love for beautiful and majestic plants. On the one hand, local associations for their care and preservation emerged, which primarily adorned the living areas and gardens of their members, on the other hand, collections with impressive trees of many species, so called arboreta, were created in parks by wealthy private individuals. These orientations of nature conservation can be traced back to its roots in the Romanticism and in the life reform movement in Europe, in which predominantly educated and appropriately situated citizens revolted against the rapidly advancing industrialization and longed for a more natural state. Until today, nature conservation has lost little of its special appeal for the “better” society.

So it should not be surprising that nature conservation, which is often considered as prestigious, attracts attention much more frequently by sophisticated events, than by real success stories from the wild. However, the continuing interest of more or less prominent representatives of the upper class in mostly contentless honorary functions within long-established nature conservation associations, must not disguise the slow break-away of the basis of long-term dedicated, volunteer activists, which is indispensable for an efficient work. Because the superficial, as well as self-loving “societal nature conservation” with its blinders and conflicts of interest, is already considered by many insiders as a historical phase-out model within the diverse environmental movement. Important reasons for this dwindling confidence in some old nature conservation associations are in addition to their all too high-profile committees often dominated by business leaders, the missing of their self-imposed targets, controversial conservation concepts with counterproductive effects on nature, up to the penchant for big game hunting shown by personalities associated with them, which shocked many supporters of nature conservation.

Nature conservation is often illusory!

The biodiversity and natural habitats of poor countries are particularly vulnerable to destruction, because hunger and poverty inevitably favor the exploitation and plundering of natural resources and widespread corruption there promotes their sellout. In addition, political, economic and environmental conditions in these countries change relatively often and quickly. Nature conservation is not adapted for such challenges and rapid changes. For the preparation and installation of foreign projects to combat superficial symptoms of nature conservation problems, relevant associations usually require a lot of time and money. For courageous debates without any taboo on the real causes of acute nature conservation problems, which are mostly international, political, social and economic, the relevant nature conservation institutions lack above all, the necessary independence and courage.
Another major problem of nature conservation is its historically conditioned, but completely counterproductive concept of island-like protected areas, which are now often surrounded by areas intensively used by humans. In fact, the habitat fragmentation associated with the concept of isolated nature reserves, is one of the major causes of species depletion and extinction. This concept exposes the creatures living in such isolated reserves to the increased dangers, that animals and plants on smaller islands have to contend with. Their isolated populations are particularly vulnerable to disasters and negative cascade effects. Without natural and protected corridors between these protected areas, the vital genetic exchange between neighboring populations becomes impossible, especially in densely populated regions, and the inbreeding promoted therein, prevents necessary adjustments to changed environmental conditions. The population pressure, which often grows at the external borders of many protected areas, which are often too small for the survival of particularly mobile species, pushes them further back. In addition, there are negative effects from the lowering of groundwater levels due to the steadily increasing water demand of the people in the neighborhood and their livestock. The intrusion of farm animals and domestic animals into protected areas also creates serious problems for their ecosystems, because of their feeding habits and the transmission of diseases to wild animals.
Most naive is the assumption, that starving populations could easily be prevented from invading adjacent nature reserves in order to poach or harvest fruits, mushrooms or honey at the expense of the ecosystems therein. The local procurement of animal feed and firewood is also a problem in many ways. In the process, trees are felled and shrubs destroyed, which are used by numerous animals as retreats and during reproduction, and at the same time, potentially dangerous animals and such cursed because of superstition like snakes, are arbitrarily killed. Presumably, these destructions would not cease, even if these poor people knew about the often serious consequences of their actions for locally threatened species and ecosystems. After all, people suffering from hunger have their own priorities, so that conservation in poor areas has little chance of lasting success.
In addition, armed conflicts in the vicinity of nature reserves are causing great concern. They lead to the accumulation of various weapons, which usually cause an increase in violence, oppression, poaching and smuggling of endangered species. A kind of compromise peace with nature does not seem feasible without real peace among humans and vice versa!

More and more often questioned is also the basic idea for nature reserves, according to which the people, with the exception of the staff, and tourists driven around most of the time on pre-marked courses against lots of money, are largely locked out. In fact, this hinders any emergence of emotional attachment of the local people with the rest of nature, which is the most important prerequisite for developing a caring relationship with it. It would make much more sense, to protect nature by involving larger regions with several protected core zones, largely integrating the local populations, and not merely limiting the conservation to small and accordingly fragile natural sites in protected areas, which is difficult, if not impossible, in the long term, but by also implementing socially adapted renaturations in their human-populated environment. But such a contemporary conservation approach would endanger important political and economic interests. In many ways, these benefit from the regular establishment of many small protected areas, by politically capturing nature-minded citizens as voters and from deviating the attention of both the public and the competent authorities away from the destruction of nature outside of the protected areas. The more so, as the tasks of mere administration of more and more small protected areasnd are blocking a large part of the capacities of the nature conservation authorities, already chronically understaffed and overwhelmed with these new challenges.

Nature conservation is not a success story!

Originally, the modern nature conservation movement was created to prevent the extinction of highly sought-after game animals. The methods of choice were temporary hunting bans and restrictions through quotas for endangered species, as well as deterrent punishment of poaching. Since the habitats of the over-exploited game populations were largely intact at that time, and therefore protection of ecosystems was´nt up-to-date, nature conservation initially dealt almost exclusively with the conservation of species. Its attention was given to populations of a few particularly valuable and conspicuous species. This selfishly selective and shortsighted approach dominates the nature conservation movement until today, though it had badly impacted countless species of animals and plants over the last hundred years. The extinction of species has increased exponentially during this period due to reckless human activities, and has now reached levels unprecedented since the disappearance of the dinosaurs. Possibly, this tunnel vision of nature conservation, which until today is focused mainly on a few species and habitats, and constantly overlooks the vast majority of threatened living beings, is one of the main reasons, why its history unfortunately is`nt a success story. Its distressing records inevitably become apparent, when one considers the long lists of recently exterminated populations, species and destroyed natural paradises, or the ever-increasing threat to species such as tigers, elephants, & Co, which have been at the center of interest in nature conservation for many decades.

To understand the causes of this failure of nature conservation, one first has to figure out, how it came to its narrowed focus. There is no doubt, that its very close links with hunters and elitist conservationists, had a significant impact right from the start. In particular, hunters and traditional elites have always favored spectacular species over all other non-human creatures. They would hardly invest their time, considered as precious by them, for lesser animals and inconspicuous plants, otherwise they might have to fear for their personal reputation within their very exigent circles. Hierarchical ideas prevail there, according to which majestic animals, impressive tree giants and superb flowering plants deserve the greatest esteem and protection in the realm of life. Since the largest and most awesome creatures also guarantee general attention, they appear to many conservation groups, as the most promising targets for their conservation efforts. While this approach, deeply rooted in modern conservation, has proven to be very successful in fundraising, it is consistently detrimental to the purported goal of protecting nature as such in its complexity. The restricted view of conservationists on very spectacular parts of nature, be it specific populations, species or habitats, is a typically male, highly focused view, which most probably was beneficial for successful hunting by our primitive human ancestors, and possibly even ensured their survival. Today, however, it does not only divert attention from the rest of nature, which is under heavy pressure in many places, but also from the essential, which is the unity of nature encompassing all life, including man, and connects it in unmanageable relationships. Due to the unbelievable variety of ecological relationships between living things and inanimate natural components, the neglect of the rest of nature becomes increasingly risky for mankind. The real danger consists in not recognizing nature as an extremely complex and unfathomable unity of all living things and natural habitats. Especially disastrous is the illusion created by monotheism, which later was largely incorporated by sciences, of humanity not belonging to this natural unity. Because as long as people do not understand themselves as a part of nature, there is a lack of concern and recklessness towards other parts of nature, including all living things, which also affects human beings, and ultimately destroys their livelihoods on Earth.

Nature as a marketplace

At first, nature conservation was strongly influenced by biocentric environmental ethics, especially in America. Soon, however, these very nature-bound ethics were gradually supplanted by the anthropocentric perspective, which purposely only considers human intrinsic values. In this context, it subjugates all of nature to mankind, conceding other living beings and natural habitats at best utilitarian values for the main benefit of people. The successful takeover by anthropocentric utilitarianism shifted the central objective of nature conservation to the European concept of the allegedly sustainable use of natural resources. As only model for it, was choosen the modern forestry of that time, which is not even sustainable from a short-term, purely economic point of view! The goal of this utilitarian concept of forestry was never the conservation of nature, but only the long-term management of renewable trees, by skimming their growth, without reducing the material value of the capital in wood. However, due to the fragmentary understanding of ecological dependencies in natural habitats, economy can offer only oversimplified representations of natural processes that have little in common with reality. Accordingly, the extremely poor in species and correspondingly vulnerable monocultures, that result from this method of forestry for timber production praised as sustainable, hardly show any similarities with semi-natural forests. This forestry concept includes large-scale clearcutting with very heavy machinery, thus causing dramatic effects on local fauna and flora, and mostly relies unperturbably on monocultures hostile to biodiversity, which due to the lack of natural antagonists, only can be defended with lots of insecticides against massively occurring forest pests.
Notwithstanding all the risks of biological degradation through allegedly sustainable use of natural resources, the vast majority of conservationists appointed by governments and private associations around the world, have fully committed themselves to the dangerous doctrine of using rare living beings for short-term profits. As if that was not enough, the “World Conservation Strategy” developed in 1980 jointly by the UN, the WWF and its sister organization IUCN, shifted the principle of sustainability, previously demanded for the protection of nature, to the protection of economic interests. Thus, the discrete switch from the sustainable use of nature, to the sustainable development of societies, which inevitably comes at the expense of nature, was ushered in by the relevant representatives of international nature conservation. This was the official conclusion of a long process, which implemented the economic principle, according to which nature conservation must immediately pay off, in the most relevant organizations, such as the WWF and others, as well as in the government bureaucracies, responsible for nature conservation. On the grounds that those market participants, who profit most from the commercialisation of natural resources, are the best guarantors for the preservation of these valuable resources, even the marketing of endangered species for exclusively commercial purposes in international trade is being advocated by them. For the most part, these institutionalized nature conservationists do not care much about the purposes, for which animals and plants of endangered species, or parts extracted from them, are ultimately traded and used. Nor do they care, how these animals are being persecuted, captured, transported, kept and killed, or how these plants are being collected!

Present uses of endangered species are extremely diverse, rarely transparent and often highly questionable. The crucial assumption, that the commercial beneficiaries of endangered species would pay attention to the conservation of their populations, has often enough turned out to be a naïve misconception. The reality shows, that the international trade with endangered species, legalized thanks to the blessing of the grandees of conservation, often reveals a typical pattern of commercial overexploitation. First, the most easily accessible populations of those species with the highest market value, are being exploited sequentially, until they are threatened. Thereafter, their less accessible populations are skimmed one after the other, and marketed almost to the point of becoming endangered, before similarly exploiting the populations of the nearest related species suitable for commercialization, up to the threat of all their accessible stocks, and so on. Thereby, natural resources of poor countries are often systematically plundered with the consent of local rulers, essentially for fat profits for wealthy, who often reside abroad.
The active support of the international marketing of endangered species by leading nature conservation associations is already more than just worthy of publicly discussion. The fact that this support is mostly based on very fragmentary knowledge about the biology of the species concerned and their ecological fucntions, is unprofgessional and irresponsible. Any argument against better knowledge, that the revenues from the marketing of endangered species are essential to the development of their countries of origin, although the profit margins for the most part, flow into industrial nations, is extremely cynical. The total neglect of potentially essential functions of social animal specimens, ripped out from their populations with unknown consequences for the survival of these groups, and of the impact of various withdrawals of animals and plants of endangered species from the gene pool of the respective populations, by the involved “nature conservationists” is grossly negligent. Their total lack of interest concerning animal welfare during the pursuit, capture, transport and killing of specimens of endangered species, is highly worrying. All the more so, because in the marketing of live animals, any loss by death due to lack of proper animal care, is being replaced within short by a new tomboy, which is especially worrying, in case animals of endangered species are concerned. Thereby, unattended animal welfare problems inevitably lead to additional conservation problems! Similarly, lack of care in collecting, storing and transporting live plants causes numerous losses, leading to an unrecorded number of additional collections of specimens of endangered species to replace them, further exacerbating their critical status.
There are only a few cases that, to the best of knowledge and belief, deserve active support for the commercial exploitation of endangered species. Examples of this are flawless projects of sustainable ecotourism, where such animals and plants remain undisturbed in protected habitats, serving the edification of paying visitors as well as the livelihood of needy people in their environment.

Nature conservation must become honest!

Honesty in nature conservation is most important, when it comes to fighting the real causes of depletion of nature without compromise. The most serious problems are the loss of endangered populations of animals and plants, of whole ecosystems and species, as well as the biological devaluation of countless natural habitats. The decisive factors behind these worrying trends of overexploitation of nature and the impairment of the environment, are the excessive consumption patterns of a rapidly growing population progressively contaminated by spreading greed.
More and more people are pursuing their selfish quests with increasingly destructive techniques at the cost of nature, its biodiversity and the interests of the general public. A particularly vivid example of dramatic technological upgrading is the progressive transition from tree-felling with the ax, to the utilization of huge handsaws handled by two strong men, to the manual use of motorized chainsaws, up to the propagation of forestry combine harvesters, which transform even big trees in no time, from very complex ecosystems with most of the life on them, into salable wood blocks, lots of very small carcasses and other organic waste.

In less than one hundred and fifty years, developing technology had increased the efficiency of logging and its impact on the forests many thousands of times! Not enough, the technological potential of tree felling is far from exhausted. The next technological leap is soon to be feared, when artificial intelligence will take the control for the purpose of completely computer-controlled forest clearing.
In addition to the technical possibilities and their consequences, the motivation to plunder nature, both among the orderers, as well as with the executing persons, has greatly increased. For the first group, this motivational push is primarily based on the wish of maximizing profits, which largely dictates our modern society and favors corruption in politics and economics, and for the second group, mostly on needs imposed by the poverty caued by other´s greed. Poverty arises from the unfair distribution of wealth and income, often due to educational deficits and inadequate pensions, and provides a constant supply of cheap stooges. For the successful fight against these serious problems, it would need internationally binding and radical socio-political changes, which are however taboo for the nature conservation elite.
Also, the exploitation of endangered species is due to the greed of ruthless business people. They often use poor locals to procure themselves valuable natural products, and thereby aggravate the poverty of whole regions through their withdrawal of resources and destruction of natural ecosystems. In illegal activities of this kind, the truly responsible persons should be unmasked and sanctioned with sufficient dissuasive effect, rather than merely punish the henchmen, as it is usually the case. For the latter only violate even the strictest nature conservation laws, because they are in dire need of money, and apart from their dreary life, they have little to lose. Moreover, they know that they can be replaced at any time by other poor people.
With regard to the legal exploitation of endangered species, authoritative conservation organizations would have to honestly cease their fatal support for the international marketing of nature for the manufacture of luxury products. The more so, as their discreetly pursued policy of commercial exploitation of nature without any respect for the lives of other species, has not only exacerbated the human pressure on them, but also stands in stark contrast to the altruistic and caring attitude of their millions of donors towards nature. In addition, such policy encouraging trade in endangered species negates the most important findings of ecology, according to which everything in nature is connected with other things, and that these innumerable relations between living things remain hidden to humans for the most part. Even if one considers nature only according to its model purposely propagated in human society as a very complex apparatus, only fools would come up with the idea of ​​removing individual parts out of it, knowing that neither competent technicians, nor instructions or spare parts are available for repairs.
In addition to honesty, more expertise is needed in the fundraising of leading conservation organizations. Too many calls for donations for nature conservation projects are done beyond any seriousness. They operate using great pictures of attractive animals, in rare cases also of plants, to raise funds for coping with problems, that can not be solved by money. The clearly preferred champions for fundraising are big cats, apes, elephants etc.

These attractive mammals evoke strong and positive emotions in many people, fostering their identification and thereby pitying them. The marketing mix of emotions such as admiration, attachment and compassion, with the awakened hope for problem solutions, is expected to raise large donations. However, those representative animals, used as “ambassadors of nature”, besides supporting fundraising, and in the best case, the temporary conservation of selected populations of their species, only very rarely serve the efficient protection of those threatened species sharing their habitats with them, as well their conspecifics of other populations, and prevent the important view of nature as unity. As in real diplomacy, where ambassadors usually represent interests of the governments nominating them, and not necessarily those of their compatriots, the “ambassadors of nature” serve above all the associations, which use them in fundraising. Since the problems pointed out by them, can only be resolved in rare cases with donations alone, the nature conservation propagated by large associations too often becomes an end in itself, as lucrative business in donation marketing. With the help of deliberately triggered emotions, sham solutions and illusions are often sold to credulous nature lovers and animal friends.

Nature conservation needs a radical reform!

In addition to more honesty, economic and political independence are further important prerequisites for successful conservation work. Nature conservation associations, which are often linked with influential business people and anchored in politically conservative circles, are therefore exposed to some conflicts of interests. The close co-operation of nature conservation associations with the economy, has led to a business model with many marketing possibilities. Examples of well-proven instruments apart from professional donor marketing include sponsorship agreements with large companies, various distribution channels for a wide range of products and services, as well as charity events of all kinds and other methods that together generate considerable sums of money. The good returns and traditional lineups of leading associations such as WWF & amp; Co as well as the risks of powerful economic and political influences on nature conservation officials and organizations, leave little room for hope that the social, economical and political changes, that are essential for the sustainable protection of biodiversity, will be speedily and seriously promoted by these institutions.

Without honest, politically independent and well-founded nature conservation work, which will tackle the real causes of the problems without compromise, the already extremely worrying decline in species and natural ecosystems, will continue to accelerate. This cutback in the diversity of life, as well as the ongoing destruction and degradation of natural habitats, can only be stopped by taming the suicidal dynamics of human society. This will only become possible, if the established nature conservation players, who were closely linked with political and economic rulers from the beginning, emancipate themselves completely from the latter, and finally tackle the real causes of the worst nature conservation problems. To do this, they must first abandon the predominant approach towards nature, which is based mainly on its economic usefulness for humans, and converge with it again with selfless attachment to it and with respect for all other living beings. Because all of today’s problems in nature conservation are of ethical origin, and result from the emotional averting of people from nature, in favor of a superficially rational and selfish approach to it. It was this unnatural anthropocentric separation of humans from nature, which triggered all these problems, after giving up the several thousands years old mystical melting of their ancestors into their natural environment, guided by their holistic environmental ethics demanding for a respectful coexistence with it.