Tuesday, August 4, 2009: 9:10 AM
San Miguel, Albuquerque Convention Center
Background/Question/Methods
Charles Elton is a towering figure in ecology, a founder of the field of animal ecology in the early 20th century and widely seen as having inspired the development of modern invasion biology. The recent increased role of invasion biology in conservation biology and environmental science has made his name familiar to a wider audience, but he is generally considered a quintessential ivory-tower academic scientist and is not widely recognized as having been motivated by conservation concerns. However, his writings abound with explicit, moving statements about the conservation implications of various ecological observations, and he devoted substantial effort to an early attempt to codify and modernize British conservation.
Results/Conclusions
His consistent, continuing references to declines of species and habitats suggest that conservation was an important motivation for his research throughout Elton’s life. A long friendship with Aldo Leopold influenced Elton’s thinking about how best to go about conservation. This is particularly apparent from their correspondence surrounding a long memorandum, “Conservation of Wild Life in Britain,” that Elton sent in 1942 to Arthur G. Tansley, a plant ecologist who headed a British Ecological Society committee on nature reserves. That Elton devoted this much intellectual effort to conservation at a time when he had turned his Bureau of Animal Population almost wholly to aiding Britain’s wartime effort by studying rodent population dynamics and control implies a profound concern. Elton’s memorandum both justified the entire enterprise of conservation and proposed mechanisms for achieving conservation, particularly through government agencies. Although the main ostensible goal of the memorandum was to infuse conservation policy with accurate, modern ecological science, Elton outlined in some detail the organizational framework he felt would be required for effective conservation. Many ideas that subsequently became prominent in modern conservation biology appeared in this memorandum – e.g., the concept of conserving a landscape matrix and not just reserves and the importance of managing introduced species. Elton subsequently aided Tansley to prepare a full-scale proposal to reform and formalize British conservation, which Tansley publicized in a 1946 book.
Charles Elton is a towering figure in ecology, a founder of the field of animal ecology in the early 20th century and widely seen as having inspired the development of modern invasion biology. The recent increased role of invasion biology in conservation biology and environmental science has made his name familiar to a wider audience, but he is generally considered a quintessential ivory-tower academic scientist and is not widely recognized as having been motivated by conservation concerns. However, his writings abound with explicit, moving statements about the conservation implications of various ecological observations, and he devoted substantial effort to an early attempt to codify and modernize British conservation.
Results/Conclusions
His consistent, continuing references to declines of species and habitats suggest that conservation was an important motivation for his research throughout Elton’s life. A long friendship with Aldo Leopold influenced Elton’s thinking about how best to go about conservation. This is particularly apparent from their correspondence surrounding a long memorandum, “Conservation of Wild Life in Britain,” that Elton sent in 1942 to Arthur G. Tansley, a plant ecologist who headed a British Ecological Society committee on nature reserves. That Elton devoted this much intellectual effort to conservation at a time when he had turned his Bureau of Animal Population almost wholly to aiding Britain’s wartime effort by studying rodent population dynamics and control implies a profound concern. Elton’s memorandum both justified the entire enterprise of conservation and proposed mechanisms for achieving conservation, particularly through government agencies. Although the main ostensible goal of the memorandum was to infuse conservation policy with accurate, modern ecological science, Elton outlined in some detail the organizational framework he felt would be required for effective conservation. Many ideas that subsequently became prominent in modern conservation biology appeared in this memorandum – e.g., the concept of conserving a landscape matrix and not just reserves and the importance of managing introduced species. Elton subsequently aided Tansley to prepare a full-scale proposal to reform and formalize British conservation, which Tansley publicized in a 1946 book.