Conservation Biology
Conservation biology may be a multidisciplinary science that has developed to deal with the loss of biological diversity. Conservation biology has two central goals: 1. to evaluate human impacts on biological diversity and a couple of . to develop practical approaches to stop the extinction of
species (Soulé 1986, Wilson 1992).Here mainly principles underlying each of those disciplines have direct implications for the management of
species and ecosystems, captive breeding and reintroduction, genetic analyses, and habitat restoration.The concept of
conservation biology was introduced by Dasmann (1968) and Ehrenfeld (1970). Soule & Wilcox's (1980) contribution, Conservation Biology: An
Evolutionary Ecological Perspective, served as an impetus for the development of the discipline. Over the next six years, many scientists began to refer to themselves as conservation biologists. Conservation Biology: The Science of Scarcity and Diversity was published, a Society for
Conservation Biology formed, and a journal was established (Soulé 1986). The interface between theory and practice in conservation biology, especially from the point of view of resource managers, has been somewhat neglected (Soulé 1986). Because we do not understand community and
ecosystem structure and function well enough to make reliable predictions, uncertainty has inhibited scientists from providing
concrete answers to managers. The availability of statistical and computational tools has been integral in the development of analytical methods critical to addressing the issue of uncertainty in conservation biology. Management tools such as population viability analysis (PVA), Bayesian statistics, and decision analysis have been developed to provide "objective" methods for making conservation decisions. These approaches have been key in the transformation of
conservation biology from an idea to a discipline.
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