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I know there's a lot of muck being thrown around at the moment regarding what to do about nature & wildlife. But it's worth remembering that a great deal of thought and science has already developed over the past century. A consensus had developed, about what needs doing. 1/9
First off save what you already have. If you have a limited amount of money, do you spend it trying to stop species or habitats disappearing, or bring them back after they've gone? You stop them disappearing. This tenet is the heart of conservation - conserving things. 2/9
It's the same with anything. You don't wait for an irreplaceable natural resource to be destroyed, then recreate it somewhere else. You put your effort into saving it, to protecting it from all threats, whether direct or indirect. This is where most effort and resources go. 3/9
Protecting and conserving the most valuable natural resources wherever they are is the 1st priority. Restoration: restoring those that have been damaged comes next. It makes sense to restore areas that link together the surviving remnants of natural or semi-natural habitat. 4/9
Restoration is priority 2. In the UK a great deal of public £ has been wasted on poorly planned short-term restoration projects via agri-environment schemes. Sad but true. Recreation and re-introduction of extinct species is priority 3, but can really help with restoration 5/9
Reintroducing ecosystem engineers like Beavers or Bison can speed up the restoration process, but also make it more successful by creating more niches for more species. And some argue that we should have extinct species back because they belong here. It's a different point. 6/9
That's the hierarchy. Conserve, Restore, Recreate. Depending on your view, Rewilding either complements this hierarchy or seeks to replace it. This dilemma also sits at the heart of Net Gain, which assumes that recreation can be as effective as conservation or restoration 7/9
The established hierarchy of conservation is being challenged from two stances - one driven by an ideology that places notions of the wild above those of conserving nature; the other from the economic arguments of natural capital. It remains to be seen where we go from here. 8/9
Exciting but divisive ideas that are vulnerable to being labelled misanthropic (see yesterday's Spectator) or turned into culture war fodder, have the potential to turn people away from nature; as will making it all about money. ENDS 9/9