The Case for Conservation Podcast

Synthetic biology, the engineering of life at the genetic level, is advancing at pace. Much of the public conversation fixates on de-extinction and charismatic creatures like woolly mammoths, dire wolves, and moas, but is that really what matters in this new world we are looking at? And while we debate whether these technologies should be applied to the natural world at all, massive investment in human medicine and agriculture is already releasing genetically modified organisms into open syst...

The relationship between science, policy, and society is often framed as a search for objective answers. In reality, it is shaped by partial perspectives and competing forms of knowledge. Why do certain perspectives dominate? Why is there such a persistent expectation that science can deliver answers to fundamentally political questions? And how do these dynamics affect trust in expertise? To explore these questions, I spoke with Mark Neff, Professor at the College of the Environment at Weste...

This episode does not argue against renewable energy—renewables are essential to decarbonization—but it does ask what the transition looks like when you account for materials, extraction, and infrastructure. The clean energy transition is often framed as a straightforward swap: renewables replace fossil fuels, emissions fall, problem solved. But beneath that story sits a harder set of questions. How material-intensive is a renewables-led grid, really? What happens when you account for the ste...

The concept of rewilding has been applied in various ways, from the simple restoration of a single natural process like removing livestock to allow vegetation to recover, to ambitious proposals to reintroduce long-extinct megafauna. While some applications have obvious conservation benefits, rewilding also raises legitimate concerns, especially about how renewed interactions with reintroduced wildlife like large herbivores and carnivores, might affect human wellbeing, livelihoods, and land us...

One of the most popular terms in conservation these days is “nature-based solutions” (NbS). The concept is centered around the various ways in which conservation (including restoration and sustainable use) can benefit society, economy and environment. NbS are alternatives to engineered solutions to these problems, which benefit people as well as nature. Sounds straightforward, and the concept has been taken up in government policy and largely embraced by conservation science. And yet it has b...

The concept of biodiversity loss is absolutely integral to conservation, and I have never met anyone who has seriously challenged the idea that too many species are going extinct, nor that their extinction is a result of human pressures. So, what do we make of multiple studies telling us that we shouldn’t be focusing so much on biodiversity loss? These studies say that, on average in samples across the world, roughly equal numbers of sites are increasing in species richness and decreasing. Ma...

Conservation competes with a variety of other societal priorities and interests for funding and for attention. As a result, conservation projects, programmes and even broader concepts are frequently “packaged” in ways that prioritize grabbing attention. But promoting or marketing conservation initiatives in this way carries certain risks. Among them is the risk of being short-lived and without a real basis in the substance of the actual initiative – in other words a fad. Another is the risk o...

Among most legacy media outlets and on social media, narratives about environmental issues, as well as social issues, are noticeably more extreme than they used to be. From activists to academics and from organizations to corporations, it has become common to hear phrases like “shattering Earth's natural limits”, “ecological meltdown”, and “boiling oceans”. Much of this rhetoric comes from a place of genuine concern and it usually contains important elements of truth. But it’s also often emot...

From time to time certain concepts rise to prominence in biodiversity conservation circles, and some of these follow in the footsteps of climate change analogs. One such concept is biodiversity credits. Biodiversity credits are a mechanism that allow for biodiversity conservation or restoration activities to derive a revenue stream through the production and sale of a quantifiable unit of improvement in biodiversity. Despite the technical and philosophical challenges involved in trading in bi...

International organizations, or “IOs” for short, are typically organizations to which multiple countries belong as members. They cover virtually every aspect of human endeavor and there are many that are related to environmental protection. International organizations may influence our lives quite profoundly and yet, outside our own field, we might struggle to name more than a few of them. Furthermore, it has been proposed that most of them are not functioning entities, but rather so-called“z...

There are few environmental issues more emotive than the hunting of whales. Although the focus of environmentalists has shifted to other topics in recent times, whaling remains contentious whenever it is brought up. This is understandable considering that, for the first half of the 20th century and into the 1970s, several whale species were hunted to near-extinction. But as crude oil took over from whale oil as the fuel of industry whale populations began making impressive recoveries. Neverth...

Insects are among the most abundant organisms on Earth. About 350,000 beetle species, alone, have been described by science and this is considered to be only a fraction of their total number. In a variety of ways, insects are a fundamental part of natural and human-adapted systems. While some cause disease or ruin crops, others play a key role in ecosystem service provision, for example by pollinating certain crops or as food for other beneficial animals and people. Overall, the loss of insec...

Conservation and sustainability scientists are often expected to advise policymakers and other decision-makers. But some of the issues that they are expected to advise on, have broader consensus than others. So, when is it appropriate to advise? When is it appropriate to advocate? When should they simply present all the options or interpretations, and leave it to the decision-makers? Françoise Cardou is a plant and a community ecologist and postdoctoral fellow at Carlton University in Ottawa,...