New Conservation: Setting the Record Straight and Finding Common Ground

In a recent editorial one of the founding fathers of conservation biology, Michael Soule, expressed concern about ideas that he fears stray from conservation’s core principles and the primary goal of protecting nature (Soule 2013). Michael has inspired generations of students to pursue conservation biology, including me. When I was a university professor, Michael’s papers figured prominently in my course syllabus, and a conservation textbook I coauthored (Kareiva & Marvier 2011) features several of Michael’s publications. Because of his stature in the field of conservation, Michael’s concerns warrant thoughtful consideration. The purposes of this Comment are to correct some misimpressions Michael expressed in his editorial; to better explain what these new ideas in conservation are intended to do and, in doing so, reassure the conservation community that there exists much common ground between more traditional conservation approaches and the so-called “new conservation,” and to admit candidly that some of the proposed strategies associated with the “new conservation” remain as yet unproven. Beginning with the misimpressions about new conservation, I assume Michael refers to the popular magazine article (Kareiva et al. 2012), a more scholarly peerreviewed article on a similar topic (Kareiva & Marvier 2012), the textbook Conservation Science (Kareiva & Marvier 2011), or perhaps reports on The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) website (www.nature.org). Concisely, my colleagues at TNC and I