Welcome to
Conservation Biology!
BSC 3052
MWF 9:30-10:20
BL 209
Dr. Angela Tringali
***If you are not in the right place, please excuse yourself***
Today’s Plan
• Introductions
• Syllabus and Expectations
• What is conservation biology
Angela Tringali
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202D
Mondays and Wednesdays 10:30-12, or by appointment
angela.tringali@ucf.edu
Behavior and genetics in the Federally Threatened Florida
scrub-jay
Course Materials
• Textbook
• Fundamentals of Conservation Biology by Hunter & Gibbs
• Used from $40, new from $60, or rent for under $30
• Recommended reading
• Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Cowardine
• 100 Heartbeats by Jeff Corwin
• Turnitin.com subscription
• Sign-up using your knights email
• Class ID: 7436169
• Password: conbio
• Knights.ucf.edu email
• Course website
• http://angelatringali.wordpress.com/conservation-biology/
• password: conbio
Course Assignments
• Participation ~ 15%
• Prepare by completing readings and making discussion notes prior to
class
• Active listening and paying attention, avoiding electronic or other
distractions
• Contributing, by asking and answering questions
• Four Exams ~ 60%
• Each cover about 5 chapters, as well as supplemental readings,
lectures, and discussions
• Term Paper ~ 15%
• Choose a conservation success or failure
• Identify contributing factors
• Use that information to create a recovery plan for a currently listed
species.
• Poster Presentation ~10%
• Share your term paper with the class
What I Expect
• Come to class prepared.
• Constructive participation.
• That means you are listening actively, thinking about what is
being said, joining discussions, and asking questions. Do your best
to create an atmosphere that encourages your classmates to
participate.
• Think. I don’t want you to blindly memorize facts, I want you
to think about concepts, how they might be applied,
improved, or expanded. Recalling facts and examples can
bolster your ideas, but memorization is not the goal of this
course.
What is conservation biology?
“The applied science of
maintaining the earth’s
biological diversity.”
Conservation biology is a crisis
discipline
• Conservation decisions are made everyday, often without
detailed scientific information
• Ideally, we would have all of the information, but in reality, we
rely on best-available information
• Precautionary principle
• Analogous to medicine.
The precautionary principle
• If an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm, the
burden of proof that the action is NOT harmful falls on those
wishing to take the action.
Conservation biology is multi and
interdisciplinary
Conservation biology is mission driven
and value laden
• Mission is to maintain biodiversity
• Political advocacy to advance mission
• leads to criticism, scientific standards usually call for being valueneutral
• conservation biology is value-laden
• some species valued more than others
What is biodiversity?
The variety of life in all its
forms and at all levels of
organization.
Why does biodiversity matter?
• Instrumental Value
• Aesthetics: Nature is pretty, and people like it
• Economics: Agriculture, forestry, fisheries, medicine all rely on
natural resources
• Ecosystem services: protection from storm surge, flooding,
maintenance of water quality, nutrient cycling, pollination
• Ecological integrity: analogous to “rivet-popping” on airplane.
Loss of a few rivets or species will not cause the plane or
ecosystem to crash, but loss of several will, and it is hard to know
where that tipping point lays.
• Intrinsic Value
• Morals/Ethics: Other life forms have an and a right to exist
Why do value systems matter?
Relatively Young
• Philosophy is ancient, but discipline is barely older than you.
• 1978: First International Conference on Conservation Biology
• 1987: Journal of Conservation Biology
History of Conservation
• Ancient
• If you come on a bird’s nest… you shall not take the mother with
the young. let the mother go, taking only the young for yourself,
in order that it may go well with you and you may live long.
Duet. 22:7-7
• Many ancient hunting regulations
• American
• Romantic-Transcendental Preservation Ethic
• Resource Conservation Ethic
• Evolutionary-Ecological Land Ethic
Historical figures
• John Muir
• Communion with nature (foundation of the Sierra Club)
• Gifford Pinchot
• Nature is a resource (foundation of the US Forest Service)
• Aldo Leopold
• Conservation Biology as a discipline (every species has intrinsic
value as part of ecosystems)
J.Baird Callicott,
1990. Whither
conservation ethics?
John Muir
Romantic-Transcendental
Preservation Ethic
Gifford Pinchot
Resource
Conservation Ethic
Aldo Leopold
Evolutionary-Ecological
Land Ethic
Coming up this week
• Biodiversity (Ch. 2)
• Discuss Callicott 1990 as a class
• Don’t forget to
• bookmark course website
• order your books
• sign-up for turnitin.com