Why Conservation?

Abstract

Many people want to conserve wildlife and the countryside for purely aesthetic and moral reasons, because they look nice and are part of our natural heritage, not because conservation has any intrinsic importance or practical value. But conservation is a strictly scientific concept, meaning the maximisation of the flow of energy through any area, so there are also good scientific and economic reasons for conservation, which Richard Fitter, who is Honorary Secretary of the FPS, discusses here.